There are 69,834,714 WordPress sites in the world. According to WordPress, 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress. Wow! Those numbers easily make WordPress the most widely used content management system distributed, outnumbering the number two CMS four to one.  These stats apply to both WordPress.com and WordPress.org sites.

Imagine Design Studio chooses to use WordPress because it is easy for our clients to learn how to use AND it is full of features. One of the features that makes WordPress so popular is its incredible plugin architecture. Plugins allow us and our clients to extend WordPress functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install. WordPress has a database of over 17,000 plugins with purposes ranging from SEO to adding widgets. In addition there are thousands more plugins available for other developers.

WordPress.com is a service that hosts WordPress blogs. It is a good choice for personal blogs. WordPress is also available as downloadable open source WordPress software on WordPress.org. This is what we use and install for our client’s websites.

WordPress makes an excellent choice for building a new website, or making improvements to an existing website. If you have or will be building a website, Imagine Design Studio believes WordPress deserves serious consideration.

From our standpoint this is good news. Flash is a good thing, don’t get us wrong, but we have been discouraging the use of Flash for clients largely on the part of its lack of presence on Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad. We have found ways around heavy Flash usage, but often it comes at premium cost. Additionally, it would be difficult to support a content-rich website with integrated Flash usage and maintain a consistent user experience across multiple devices (smart phones, laptops, desktops and tablets).

While Flash may be on the decline, and it will be a slow decline, Adobe’s announcement will increase the use and development of technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, H.264 and other technologies. These technologies are not proprietary to Adobe and will work across a wider range of devices and can do many of the things Flash can. Not all things, but many. And likely that will only increase as more application and software developers turn to these other methods.

Flash set the pace for many years, but it now seems there are better options ready to take its place.