Wordpress now powers 18.9% of the web, can Xenforo afford to ignore it?

[Deepmartini]

At the State Of The Word, it was revealed that WordPress now powers 18.9% of the whole Internet (up about 2% from last year (HUGE!). Powering about 1 in 5 websites now.

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/...ownloads-according-to-founder-matt-mullenweg/

Many sites would like to add a proper forum to their site and are running WordPress as the front-end of their site. They already have a userbase and WordPress manages their members.

The addons currently here on Xenforo dealing with WordPress all make Xenforo the master and WordPress the slave. A WordPress site that is already running is NOT going to move all it's users over to Xenforo when it has WordPress plugins that depend on the WordPress user tables and member database.

What is needed is a nice addon that allows existing sites to simply add a forum to their site.

* When a WordPress user account is created, create one in Xenforo.

* When someone logs in via WordPress, have them be logged into Xenforo.

* When a user changes something in WordPress (such as their username, email, etc.), make the change in Xenforo. And vice-versa in Xenforo to WordPress.

* Add xenforo commenting ability to WordPress posts.

* When somebody logs in via the Xenforo forum area, have them be logged into the WordPress side too.

* When somebody logs out of the Xenforo forum area, have them be logged out of the Wordpress side as well.

* Sync both WordPress and Xenforo so everything matches.

Right now, sites are cobbling together inferior solutions such as BBpress, Simple Press,l Vbulletin or Vanilla Forums just to add a community section to their WordPress site. Xenforo would be an ideal solution.

With WordPress now powering 18.9% of the Internet, the market is HUGE and there is strong demand. Whoever comes up with a viable solution, will be well rewarded by the market. It's too big and simply can't be ignored any longer.

WordPress will only get bigger from here.

 

[craigiri]

I don't doubt the popularity of WP, but some additional metrics would be nice....

WP probably powers a vast number of abandoned and lightly visited sites. It would be nice to know, for example, how many forum-type sites (we could define as falling between #5,000 and 400,000 on quantcast, etc.) which have had content added at least once a week, etc.....

WP runs some vast sites like the Huffington Post and all it's competitors - that's a lot of traffic, but not as much to do with XF forum compatibility.

 

[Brent W]

xenForo either needs to provide a Wordpress like solution for xenForo or provide seamless integration with it. The ability to create more than just a forum with the simplicity of Wordpress' blogging platform would be huge for many sites.

 

[Deepmartini]

Since a Xenforo CMS isn't in the cards right now, a nice WordPress into Xenforo bridge would be ideal. Many sites are already built in WordPress and the owners won't want to change everything over to a Xenforo CMS and redo it all. They just want to add a community element and forum solution to their existing site that integrates the userbase.

 

[Deepmartini]

Here are some more Wordpress stats and infographics:

http://visual.ly/wordpress-10th-anniversary-10-years-wordpress

http://www.learnitanytime.com/2872/5-dazzling-wordpress-infographics/

http://en.wordpress.com/stats/

A HUGE market of websites who might want to add a forum to their site.

 

[Luxus]

Wordpress now powers 18.9% of the web, can Xenforo afford to ignore it?

Yes.

 

[Deepmartini]

Yes.

Sure, if Xenforo has it's own CMS, (which we know isn't coming anytime soon).

 

[ranflyer]

Here's an example of a new platform that is hoping to move in on some of WordPress's territory (as a blogger/content platform) and the key is building community. But agree that some combinations are useful.

http://sett.com/

 

[craigiri]

I would only consider such a bridge if I could be assured it would go on as long as XF.

That would mean it would have to either come from XF or be open sourced or otherwise community based in some way that we could be sure that a developer doesn't have a hissy fit, etc and disappear one day (without leaving the code to the rest of us).

Developers may be wary of giving stuff away, but I'd wager that as much money could be made from support, consulting, installation and modification as from the add-on itself, so it could still be worthwhile.

But, yeah, I'm in line for two copies....

 

[MikeMpls]

How much of the need for "linkage" would be handled by a WP --> XF importer?

Integrating the XenTag add-on into the XF base would help.

Up to now, the main advantages of WP for me have been spam management, tagging & image handling. With XF 1.2 + XenTag, those advantages are pretty much gone. I need a converter!

I would say to provide the converter first, then see what needs really remain.

If you think about the underlying organizations, most WP sites are just single-forum sites with the posts ordered by date. A small number (e.g. wired.com & CBS news) could be converted into our more customary format with multipe forums on the main index.

Not that Wired & CBS would ever convert, but for simpler blogs XF is now good competition except in pricing (free is hard to beat).

 

[Deepmartini]

I would only consider such a bridge if I could be assured it would go on as long as XF.

That would mean it would have to either come from XF or be open sourced or otherwise community based in some way that we could be sure that a developer doesn't have a hissy fit, etc and disappear one day (without leaving the code to the rest of us).

Developers may be wary of giving stuff away, but I'd wager that as much money could be made from support, consulting, installation and modification as from the add-on itself, so it could still be worthwhile.

But, yeah, I'm in line for two copies....

I've seen that movie too many times. Fickle developers who abandon ship.

 

[Izagar]

I would like it if there was a functional mod that would at least connect the WP site to the Xenforo site and allow only forum members to comment on news posts on the main site. Right now I use WP with Disqus for that, but even then, I don't like it much since it doesn't direct users to my forums.

 

[DRE]

Nowadays when people ask me about making a site I suggest Xenforo to them. I tell them that they can make Xenforo as their CMS. Just buy the right addons, hire a coder and/or designer and their good to go. Don't have to worry about security and weird permissions issues unlike Wordpress.

 

[LPH]

So much of what is appearing in this thread has already been stated here:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/any-plans-for-a-cms.48517/

I would like it if there was a functional mod that would at least connect the WP site to the Xenforo site and allow only forum members to comment on news posts on the main site.

This exists. Please check the bridge resources and you'll find at least two ways for this to be done.

 

[digitalpoint]

I don't doubt the popularity of WP, but some additional metrics would be nice....

WP probably powers a vast number of abandoned and lightly visited sites. It would be nice to know, for example, how many forum-type sites (we could define as falling between #5,000 and 400,000 on quantcast, etc.) which have had content added at least once a week, etc.....

I pulled some data out of my cookie/JS search engine/spider...

https://tools.digitalpoint.com/cookie-search

*I* show 13.8% of all sites running WordPress ("all sites" for this purpose means the top 7,000,000 or so sites that it spiders).

It's pretty remarkable how up to date WordPress sites are... this chart shows the branch of WordPress the spidered sites are using (this chart doesn't include the sites hosted by wordpress.com since they are always up to date).

 

[p4guru]

yeah wordpress ease of updating factors into it

 

[craigiri]

yeah wordpress ease of updating factors into it

Since most installers of it just hit a button or install the newest version from their ISP's control panel, it makes sense that the installations are up to day.

What we don't know is whether the blogs themselves are kept up to date. I suppose that they follow the usual stats of blogs......one measurement claims 95% of blogs don't have any updates within the last 120 days.

 

[TPerry]

WP probably powers a vast number of abandoned and lightly visited sites. It would be nice to know, for example, how many forum-type sites (we could define as falling between #5,000 and 400,000 on quantcast, etc.) which

I have it running on 4 domains myself - and very rarely visit/update them as they are family blogs.

 

[Sadik B]

It's pretty remarkable how up to date WordPress sites are... this chart shows the branch of WordPress the spidered sites are using (this chart doesn't include the sites hosted by wordpress.com since they are always up to date).

That has two major reasons. 1> Updating is remarkably easy (single click only) and 2> Google Webmaster Tools sends you an email if it detects that you are running an older version of WP. I get emails like these if I am on an older version:

WordPress Update Available
As of the last crawl of your website, you appear to be running WordPress 3.3.1. One or more of the URLs found were:

 

[Shelley]

I'm betting most of the WP Blogs are either abandoned or neglected blogs. I recently had a discussion with @DRE about blogging and it seems taking into account most WP blogs are neglected/abandoned (I could be wrong here) and add in the factor that most forum blogging gets overlooked/unused I don't think xenforo is missing out too much, not as much as it may appear to the 1 in 5 sites runs WP statistics.