
The official 10th anniversary of the release of WordPress is May 27, 2013. It has been an amazing 10 years, during which WordPress evolved from a simple blogware to a very full-featured CMS (Content Management System), used to power some of the biggest and most popular web sites on the internet. All over the world, people are planning celebrations. As much as I like a good party, I thought this would also be a good time to celebrate WordPress by actually using WordPress — for blogging.
So much of our content sharing these days tends to be via centralized “social” platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, etc., that some of us neglect our blogs. I know I’m guilty of that. But this anniversary is a good excuse for the WordPress community to take a few minutes to consider their time with our favorite website building tool. Here’s what I propose…
Think about the past 10 years, and your time with WordPress. Maybe, like myself, you’ve been using WordPress since the beginning, or perhaps you just tried it out for the first time last month. But consider the events that stand out in your memory during that time. Now, write a blog post about it. Wherever you fall on the timeline, you should probably be able to write something about one or more of the following openings:
- “When WordPress was first released in 2003..”
- “When I first started using WordPress…”
- “Since I first started using WordPress…”
So, for example, I’ve been using WordPress pretty much since the beginning. I didn’t actually switch my blog until September 2003, but I’d been committing to core before that, so I might list things like,
When WordPress was released in May 2003:
- I was 36 years old
- I had been married for less than 2 years
- I already had nearly 10 years of web development experience
- My Pentium 4 laptop with 1GB of RAM was a screaming machine
When I first started using WordPress in September 2003…
- The Ellen Degeneres show had just debuted on TV
- The US Treasury redesigned the $20 bill
- George W. Bush was in his first term as President
- SCO and IBM were locked in a legal battle over ownership of Linux source code
- My day-job was doing web development in VBScript and PerlScript on IIS4 servers
- Many people didn’t have cell phones, and the iPhone was still 4 years away
- Mozilla replaced Netscape
- The term ‘AJAX’ (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) didn’t exist yet
- The Ubuntu distribution of Linux didn’t exist yet
- PHP5 was brand spanking new
- Facebook was only a few months old, and I hadn’t even heard of it yet
- Geocities was still a big thing
Since I started using WordPress…
- There have been 2 Summer Olympics and 2 Winter Olympics
- I moved from southeast Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia
- I became a homeowner
- I have changed jobs at least 8 times, if you include short-term contracts
- I have had another daughter, who is now in 2nd grade
- Apple switched from Motorola PowerPC to Intel processors
- My family adopted a dog and two cats
- There have been 5 iterations of the iPhone and 3 of the iPad
- Myspace went from top-of-the-heap to also-ran to come-back-kid
There could be all sorts of life, historical, or technological events listed, but anyhow, you get the idea.
It’s nothing complicated, but I just thought this would be a really fun thing to give a lot of people something common to write about, and actually use our WordPress sites for publishing content. I suggest we use the tag wp10
for all the posts (hashtag #wp10
for Twitter and such). Also, in addition to writing your own post, make sure to seek out posts by others, and link to your favorites!
i dig this. let me think this over!
I look forward to reading yours!
Indeed the last 10 years have been amazing with WordPress.
I am very thankful for the WordPress community.
And we’re grateful for your contributions. I hope we’ll see a post from you, as well!
I posted mine a little early, see my link above.
Ah! I was reading your comment in the Dashboard, and didn’t see the link!
I guess I will have to set up a blog again and do this! One thing I do remember from very early on was following this Dougal guy and learning lots from him as well as many others.
WP FTW!
DO EET! Blog all the things!
This is an awesome idea. I’ve been using WordPress since 1.5 I think, and it’ll be interesting to take a look over the last ten years and see what all has changed, along with highlighting things that happened over the last ten.
Version 1.5 was pretty early into things. I’m sure you have stories to tell!
V 0.7x was my first install. Yikes!
Awesome. I’d been planning to do a WP anniversary post, but didn’t know what to focus on. This is exactly what I needed to read. Count me in!
Great! I had this idea a year ago, and I’m really looking forward to reading everybody’s stories/timelines. With lots of people working off of a similar topic template, I think it will be really fun being able to compare notes!
Taking part in this – scheduled some time to write the post 🙂
Great stuff Dougal 🙂
Thanks, Emil! Have you been able to stay dry with all that rain you’ve been having up there?
I hear someone post somewhere that blogger can get the T-shirt with WordPress 10th Anniversary. Any one know how to get it?
The WordPress 10th Anniversary T-shirts are here:
http://wordpress.org/news/2013/04/wordpress-10th-anniversary-tees/
Thank you! But, this sales is unavailable now.
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Here is another graphic description of what WordPress was and what has become ) http://wpbuzzerblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/wordpress-facts-part-2-infographic/
it did really change the things out there for many folks
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Thanks Dougal! I remember finding this post in early May and bookmarking it telling myself that I would do one of these myself. Well, today is the day, and you inspired me to do this post: http://www.bobwp.com/wordpress-10th-anniversary-today-and-a-look-back/
Cheers!
I just wanted to thank everybody for your posts about your time with WordPress. Even though I don’t get to spend much time working on WP code anymore, I’m still happy to have been a part of its history, and to remain a member of the community!
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