25 years of blogging, 20 years of WordPress
The first time I ever saw the concept of blogging online was in the late 90’s, in a slashdot post. Someone had invented something called a “weblog”, like a log book on the web, but commonly referred to as a “blog”. At the time everyone was simply making a new html file for each post, and then updating a table of contents by hand.
A couple of my friends decided to try it and installed Moveable Type. I was a web developer, so I thought “how hard could it be?” Well, I didn’t know perl, and I didn’t understand how to set up all the CGI stuff needed and it failed utterly.
Then in 2004 Moveable Type closed their source. I was deeply involved with the open source world at the time, and it was quite a shock to the entire open source world. Everyone kind of knew MT was going to die, and an open source solution would come out. People looked around and saw WordPress.
I too looked at WordPress, but I thought “That’s PHP/MySQL, I could do that”. And I did. I made my own blog system that I used until 2013 or so. This is one of my biggest regrets of my career. I would have absolutely fit in with the WordPress crowd in 2003/4 and it would have changed my career tremendously.
Historical Patterns
Personally I like to compare historical periods. The first couple decades of the 1900’s changed everything from the 1800’s. Things were invented in the 1800’s, but in the 1900’s we really built on it. Electricity, cars, airplanes; these things changed the entire world forever.
The internet is the same for our time. It really started moving in the 1990’s, but the new millennium is when things really started changing. Netscape went open source and Mozilla and Firefox changed browsing forever. PHP really gained traction.
And then there was WordPress. I compare WordPress to Ford and Lockheed. I know WordPress is just software, and not a company, but I do think it’s also a brand. I don’t compare it to the Model T, but rather to The Automobile. It’s changing everything. Even if it’s gone in 80 years, It will have changed the world forever. I don’t really expect the gasoline automobile to last more than 150 years. But I do feel that if WordPress ended TODAY, it would have already changed the world in unimaginable ways. I can only dream of how much more it’s going to change things.
The Future
For all that I missed the first 7 years of WordPress, I’ve been deeply honored to be part of the last 13. When I watch movies like Hidden Figures I think “How amazing to have been there at that time”. Then I realize I’m in my own time. I saw the birth of the internet, and I’ve engaged with one of the biggest projects of our time. What a privilege!
WordPress has given me a career, it’s changed how I’ve raised my children, and it’s introduced me to thousands of my closest friends, all over the world.
Matt and Mike started it, but literally thousands of people around the world have built this magnificent thing. Those people enabled things like WordCamp Crazy, building world peace. I personally know people that chose NOT to end their own life because the WordPress community was there for them.
If you’ve ever contributed to WordPress, you did this. Thank you. You are amazing, and you’ve changed the world already, and it’ll never be the same.
Here’s to 20 more years.