WordPress

The first version of WordPress was released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It was a small yet promising platform, built on PHP and MySQL — lightweight, open-source technologies that were both widely supported and accessible to developers. Initially designed as a simple blogging tool focused on clean typography and easy publishing, it quickly outgrew its humble beginnings and evolved into a powerful platform that would revolutionize the internet and dominate the landscape of website creation.

The introduction of plugins in 2004 was a pivotal moment, allowing users to extend WordPress’s functionality far beyond its core features. In 2005 themes were rolled out, enabling users to change their site’s appearance with ease. That same year a visual content editor and an improved administration interface were launched. Gradually, WordPress was transforming into a fully fledged Content Management System (CMS).

By the early 2010s, WordPress had become the most widely used CMS in the world — powering everything from personal blogs to major corporate websites. Its dominance was largely due to its open-source nature — its code was freely accessible, modifiable, and distributable by anyone. That openness fostered a vast, collaborative developer community that contributed to its growth, driving continuous innovation and customization.

While WordPress had become increasingly user-friendly through plugins, themes and features like custom posts, widgets, menus, and more, creating a well-designed site still often required some technical knowledge. The rise of third-party page builders in the mid-2010s began to change that — offering drag-and-drop tools that lowered the barrier to entry. But it wasn’t until 2018, with the release of the native Gutenberg Block Editor, that this visual, no-code approach was fully embraced by WordPress itself. Building on the groundwork laid by earlier tools, Gutenberg marked a major shift in the platform’s evolution — making it truly possible for anyone to create professional websites without writing a single line of code.

Operated by Automattic, WordPress.com is a hosted platform that allows users to create websites without needing to manage server infrastructure. It offers a range of plans — from free to enterprise-level — and is ideal for those who prefer a more hands-off approach to website management. Commonly used by bloggers, hobbyists, and anyone looking for a simplified setup, WordPress.com appeals to users who value convenience and ease of use.

However, this convenience comes with certain limitations. Because the hosting environment is controlled by Automattic, users have less flexibility and fewer customization options compared to self-hosted WordPress.org sites. Access to themes, plugins, and advanced functionality can be restricted depending on the plan, and full control over the site’s code or server configuration is not available. While WordPress.com is a great choice for getting started quickly, users seeking complete control, scalability, or the ability to deeply customize their site may eventually outgrow its constraints.

WordPress.org is the official website for the open-source WordPress Content Management System (CMS). It’s developed and maintained by a global community of contributors, and the software is free to use, modify, and distribute. Thanks to its flexibility, simplicity, and vast ecosystem of plugins and themes, the CMS software available from WordPress.org is by far the most popular platform for building websites.

Users can freely download and install the CMS on their own web hosting servers to build and manage websites. Because they are responsible for hosting and maintaining it themselves, this self-hosted setup offers complete control over customization, themes, and plugins. This level of flexibility makes it especially appealing to those who need scalability or want to tailor every aspect of their site — from individuals and small businesses to large organizations.

The WordPress Foundation is a non-profit organization established in 2010 by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The Foundation’s stated mission is to promote, protect, and ensure free access to the WordPress CMS. It acts as a steward of the open-source project, supporting both the software and the global community around it.

The Foundation owns the WordPress trademark, helping to ensure it’s used in ways that align with the spirit of the project. This prevents misuse by commercial entities and supports efforts to educate people about open-source software and encourage community contribution. By championing the Four Freedoms of Open Source — to use, study, modify, and distribute the software — the Foundation ensures that no one can take control of WordPress or make it proprietary. Through event sponsorship, community initiatives, and global collaboration, the Foundation plays a key role in nurturing and sustaining the worldwide WordPress ecosystem.

As well as establishing the WordPress Foundation, Matt Mullenweg also founded Automattic — which may be why the two are often confused. However, they serve very different purposes. Established in 2005, Automattic is a private, distributed technology company best known for operating WordPress.com, the hosted version of WordPress.

While the Foundation is a non-profit organization that owns the WordPress trademark and is dedicated to preserving open, free access to the software, Automattic is a commercial enterprise that builds software and services around the WordPress ecosystem. In essence, the Foundation acts as a guardian of the open-source project, while Automattic is one of its most prominent — but independent — commercial stakeholders.

In addition to owning, operating, and maintaining WordPress.com, Automattic also owns a wide range of other popular plugins and platforms, including WooCommerce, Jetpack, Akismet, Gravatar, Tumblr, and many more — products that have helped it grow into a billion-dollar business.

Nevertheless, Automattic remains a major contributor to the WordPress open-source project, sponsoring WordCamps and meetups globally, and playing a key role in the development and promotion of Gutenberg, the modern block editor featured throughout this site.

For many years, the Classic Editor was the default WordPress editor — a familiar, word processor-style experience similar to Microsoft Word. Based on a traditional What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) approach, it provided a straightforward simple way to create and format content.

That changed dramatically in 2018 with the introduction of Gutenberg, the modern block editor that brought a modular, block-based approach to content creation. It represented a fundamental shift in how users build and design pages. Yet despite this transformation, the Classic Editor remains widely used, largely thanks to the Classic Editor Plugin, which many developers and designers continue to rely on. Even today, many page builders — though visually advanced — still operate on top of the Classic Editor framework.

Resistance to Gutenberg has been strong and enduring, especially among those managing and maintaining legacy websites. That resistance isn’t unfounded as many older themes and plugins were built specifically for the Classic Editor and lack full compatibility with Gutenberg’s block-basd structure. In such cases, even switching to a modern theme can cause significant layout or functionality issues.

For now, the Classic Editor remains a vital part of the WordPress landscape. But its future is limited. Eventually, it will no longer be supported, and as WordPress continues to evolve around blocks, its relevance will inevitably decline. Despite the loyalty it still commands, the Classic Editor’s fate is sealed — it’s only a matter of time before it’s phased out entirely.

The emergence of the first WordPress page builders was a game-changer. Suddenly, users no longer needed to write code just to create custom layouts or tweak designs. Page builders introduced drag-and-drop control, making powerful design tools accessible to a much broader audience.

WPBakery released one of the first major page builders in 2011 and it quickly gained traction, reaching over a million active installs within a few years. Today, WPBakery claims over 5 million users. As more players entered the market, page builders exploded in popularity. Competitors like Beaver Builder, Divi, and Bricks introduced new features and refined user experiences. Elementor, now considered the most successful page builder, is estimated to have more than 12 million installs.

However, although they simplified site creation, early page builders could still feel overwhelming for beginners. They were originally developed to work within WordPress’s limitations, and as the platform evolved with the introduction of tools like block editors and Full Site Editing (FSE), this lack of native integration created friction — changing a global layout, for example, often required multiple steps or custom code. In response, page builder developers adapted. Elementor introduced a Block Mode Plugin that integrated its widgets into Gutenberg. Beaver Builder launched Beaver Themer to bridge FSE with its interface. Others, like Oxygen and Bricks, went the opposite route — bypassing Gutenberg entirely in favour of custom visual frameworks, often claiming better performance and cleaner layouts.

So, while the move towards Gutenberg and related tools posed a significant challenge to traditional page builders, they continue to thrive — with new entrants still joining the space each year. They may still be more popular than Gutenberg today, but we believe the momentum behind WordPress’s native block-based direction is unstoppable. That doesn’t mean page builders will disappear — far from it. We expect them to continue evolving, as their teams innovate to remain competitive. A single unified editor across WordPress is unlikely, given the open-source nature of the platform and the diversity of commercial models in the ecosystem. However, a growing convergence between page builders and the Gutenberg Block Editor is already underway — blending the strengths of both approaches into more flexible, hybrid workflows.

The WordPress Foundation announced the introduction of the Gutenberg Block Editor, which replaced the Classic Editor with the release of WordPress 5.0 in December 2018. While the announcement was significant, it was not entirely a surprise. It was a widely expected update that reflected WordPress’s evolving vision.

Gutenberg is designed to offer users greater design flexibility, a more intuitive editing experience, and less reliance on custom code. Although it shares some of the innovations introduced by third-party page builders, there are fundamental differences. Most notably, Gutenberg uses a block-based system for content creation, while page builders typically employ a drag-and-drop interface for visual page layout.

Such a major shift sent shockwaves through the WordPress community. The transition was met with considerable resistance and criticism — much of which still lingers today. The reaction was understandable, as developers who had relied on the Classic Editor for years saw Gutenberg not merely as a new tool, but as a potential threat to their livelihood. Not necessarily because they couldn’t adapt, but because it signalled a move toward less custom-coded solutions. After all, why pay for custom development if users could now build complex layouts themselves.

Yet the outcome has been quite the opposite. Rather than diminishing opportunities for developers, Gutenberg has broadened them. By making website creation more accessible, it sparked a wave of new sites and empowered a wider audience to establish their digital presence. This shift, in turn, created fresh demand for skilled developers to design custom blocks, themes, and plugins, and to support users seeking tailored solutions. Far from rendering developers obsolete, Gutenberg has redefined their role within a more vibrant and collaborative ecosystem.

Regardless of the criticism, the WordPress Foundation understood that change was both necessary and inevitable. The rapid rise of page builders made it clear that the Classic Editor was outdated. If WordPress didn’t evolve, competitors would quickly fill the gap. The success of the decision is reflected in the continued growth of WordPress’s share of the CMS market since Gutenberg’s introduction.

Love it or hate it, Gutenberg, block editing, and Full Site Editing (FSE) represent the future of WordPress — and most users and developers now recognize that, whether they like it or not.

After the launch of Gutenberg, the page-building landscape began shifting — from shortcodes and proprietary builders to a block-based paradigm. Initially introduced as a replacement for the Classic Editor, Gutenberg allowed users to structure content using blocks for paragraphs, images, galleries, and more. But it soon became clear that these blocks could serve as the foundation for entire page layouts — not just post content.

By 2019, 3rd party developers had begun rolling out block enhancement plugins (or block libraries) that introduced advanced elements like custom sliders, pricing tables, interactive galleries, FAQs, and call-to-action banners. Early leaders in this space included Atomic Blocks, Otter Blocks, and Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg. These tools filled the gap between Gutenberg and fully featured page builders, offering greater design flexibility while still operating within the native WordPress editor.

A key advantage of block editors is their integration with the WordPress core. Because they extend Gutenberg and FSE directly, they’re typically more lightweight than page builders, which often come bundled with a host of hard-coded features — many of which users may never need. This efficiency leads to faster load times and smoother site operation, which in turn supports stronger Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As a result, sites built with block editors often benefit from cleaner code and better performance — both important factors for visibility and user experience.

While page builders are often touted as being better suited for large, complex websites, we challenge that notion. There is virtually nothing achievable with page builders that can’t also be accomplished using block editors and plugins. With the evolving power of the block ecosystem, block editors are becoming increasingly capable of handling complex site builds.

In early 2022, WordPress’s rollout of Full Site Editing (FSE) and its new site editor interface marked another major advance in the platform’s development — transforming WordPress from a post editor into a full-fledged site builder. While the Gutenberg Block Editor was originally focused on structuring content within individual posts and pages, FSE extended the block-based paradigm to the entire website — including headers, footers, navigation, and even global styles. With FSE, users can design and customize the full structure of a site using intuitive, drag-and-drop blocks, without ever having to write any code.

This milestone sparked a new wave of block-focused plugins positioning themselves as FSE-ready. Tools like Kadence, Greenshift, Stackable, and Spectra were built to harness the power of FSE, offering enhanced control over global styles, typography, spacing, and layout settings — all within a cohesive interface.

It’s worth noting that classic page builders—such as WPBakery, Elementor, Divi, and Beaver Builder—are not block editors and do not use WordPress’s native FSE system. Instead, they provide their own proprietary frameworks for site building.

In our view, as FSE continues to evolve — with new features in every release — the distinction between page builders and block editors will continue to blur. Over time, the core block-based system may offer enough power and flexibility to make many traditional page builders unnecessary, empowering users to build entire sites natively with Gutenberg and its spinoffs