A couple of months ago we collected some data on how many WordPress-powered sites we host. We knew it had to be a pretty large amount because we see them constantly. It turns out that we are hosting nearly 500,000 WordPress websites! Out of about 1 million total domain names hosted, that means that almost half of them have at least one WordPress blog. I knew it was a lot, but I didn’t expect it to be that many. Crazy!
So, the next thing I thought was, “I wonder which plugins are the most popular among all of those WordPress users.” Well, here’s the answer (the ones with ** are included by default)…
It’s not surprising to see 3 of the top 5 be some of our default plugins (we only enable either WP-Cache or WP-Supercache, not both), but it is surprising that some non-default plugins made it so high on the list. For instance, Google Sitemap Generator is in use on nearly 12% of all of our WordPress sites! That’s even more impressive when you consider that these numbers include our fully-managed easy one-click for WordPress, which don’t allow you to install your own plugins. We didn’t break out how many of those there are, but there’s enough of them that it would skew the results. I also found it amusing that nearly 2% of our WordPress blogs have the “Hello, Dolly” plugin enabled. Statistics related plugins are popular as a group, with 5 of them making an appearance on the list.
July 15th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Some of the wording is a bit odd; for example, while you may have 500,000 WP installs and 1,000,000 domains, there are more than likely several WP installs on much less domains. Not a big deal, but important to note statistics-wise!
July 15th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
that is awesome! it appears none of my plugins are popular.
July 15th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
What I would like to know is – Akismet is an addon to control spam. If it is sooo popular, why aren’t they integrating it right into the software?
July 15th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
@Dallas
I’m on a Private Server. I very much appreciate the ability to run NGINX, now I only wish all of the One-Click installs worked seamlessly with NGINX.
If that was possible – my dreams would come turn.
July 15th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
Make it one less WordPress website. I got annoyed with WordPress a couple of weeks ago and scrapped it in favor of a home grown solution. WordPress is great in some ways, but I got sick of the constant security patch/update treadmill. Also, it includes approximately 19,393,541 features I don’t actually need or use, adding complexity (and therefore possible bugs and security vulnerabilities).
Still hosting on Dreamhost (except the images, which I moved to Amazon Cloudfront), but no WordPress.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
dangermouse asked: “Akismet is an addon to control spam. If it is sooo popular, why aren’t they integrating it right into the software?”
WordPress is the proper place to ask that question. I can only guess that because Akismet requires sending submissions to Akismet’s servers this choice of implementation makes Akismet undesirable by some WordPress users. Those users would rather let people who want that risk turn on Akismet (opt-in) instead of getting something by default (opt-out).
The risks I foresee include sending (what could be) sensitive submissions to a third party and trusting one’s hoster’s DNS service for spam control (imagine if someone at Akismet forgot to renew their domain or if someone’s hoster’s DNS server somehow had an entry for Akismet’s server that didn’t point to the popular Akismet server).
Besides, Akismet’s current implementation requires an API key so until that changes, one can’t actually make use of Akismet without getting an API key. Baking Akismet code into WordPress means pushing code that could be completely useless to non-Akismet WordPress users. Addons can be more frequently upgraded than the code they’re adding onto; this means (like any other addon) Akismet can be more flexibly improved than waiting for the next WordPress upgrade cycle.
July 16th, 2010 at 7:33 am
>>”I also found it amusing that nearly 2% of our WordPress blogs have the “Hello, Dolly” plugin enabled.”<<
I'm pretty sure that "Hello Dolly" is installed by default & is auto-on. At least, I know that I have to deactivate it & delete it *every* time I do the one-click update through y'all's web panel.
July 16th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Hello Dolly is not enabled by default, at least with a normal WordPress download and install.
Also seeing my video quicktags plugin on this list is a further reminder that I need to devote more time to it. :(
July 19th, 2010 at 10:13 am
Is it a problem for you guys that All-in-one SEO is your fourth most used plugin and it’s also breaks your ToS?
July 27th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
This is nice work, I’m using most of the plugin which comes first 10 in this list.
July 29th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
@Rhett Soveran That’s a good question! We’ve loosened our rules about All-in-one SEO in recent months. We were seeing it involved with a lot of problematic websites for awhile which is why it was originally thought to be responsible for it, but we now think it’s probably just so popular of a plugin that its in use on a lot of popular websites. It’s hard to tell what exactly is causing a specific problem and if we start seeing what appears to be a trend we can sometimes jump to an incorrect conclusion.
@Xkeeper Yeah, I did some hand-waving statistics-wise. We don’t have all the numbers I’d like to have, but I wanted to provide some context still.
August 1st, 2010 at 12:31 pm
All-in-one-seo pack is great but I am a bit surprised that Headspace 2 did not make your list. This is a plugin that some people argue is even superior to All-in-one-SEO plugin.
But having said that, your list is superb.
August 1st, 2010 at 8:46 pm
well i think akismet is there on the top because it prevents spamming and come along with wordpress installation as default
August 3rd, 2010 at 4:13 am
WP-Cache is enabled with dreamhost per default? I use your guys service for web hosting of my sites, but have never seen wp-cache enabled per default, or am I missing something here? :)
Thanks.
August 13th, 2010 at 9:06 am
This is nice work, I’m using most of the plugin which comes first 10 in this list.
August 14th, 2010 at 3:51 am
Thank you for sharing useful information that you have..!!
August 19th, 2010 at 2:12 am
I use the blog on quite a few of my sites. In fact, I am planning to have a blog for many of them just to attempt better advertising and marketing on my sites and to get more adsense up! I have one blog I am extremely active on, well not so much lately though. =(
August 28th, 2010 at 1:25 am
I only wish all of the One-Click installs worked seamlessly with NGINX
August 30th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Thanks for this. Found it forwarded by someone on my Twitter follow list. I am Looking forward to more hints and tips like this. This is very nice post! I will bookmark this blog.
August 31st, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Strange that none of the CDN plugins are on that list. Above Poster: Headspace 2 is fairly unknown.
September 1st, 2010 at 12:25 am
looks good.
September 4th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
I only wish all of the One-Click installs worked seamlessly with NGINX
September 6th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Defaults being so high on the list just shows you how convenient both WP and your installer is. Throw it up, forget it, and move on.