WordPress, explained in plain language: what it is, how widespread it is and why it needs maintenance

If you have a website, chances are it is built on WordPress — even if you have never heard the name. As of mid-2026, WordPress powers 41.5% of all websites on the internet and almost 6 out of 10 sites that use a content management system (W3Techs). It is, by far, the most widely used platform in the world.

In this article we explain, in plain language, what WordPress is, why it became so widespread, what its advantages and drawbacks are, what WooCommerce is and how strongly it dominates online commerce — including in Romania — and, finally, why a WordPress site needs regular maintenance to stay fast and secure.

What WordPress is, in short

WordPress is a free, open-source program for building websites, launched in 2003. "Open-source" means anyone can use, modify and distribute it freely, without paying for a licence. In practice, it gives you an interface where you add pages, articles, photos and products without writing code for every single thing.

There is a common confusion worth clearing up:

• WordPress.org is the software itself, which you install on hosting of your choice. You have full control over the site — but you (or someone on your behalf) take care of hosting, security and updates. This is the WordPress this article is about.
• WordPress.com is a managed hosting service built on the same software, where the provider handles the technical side for a subscription.

To grasp the leap: nearly 20 years ago, WordPress had under 1% market share. Today, it has become the quiet engine behind a good part of the web.

How widespread is it? The numbers

The most cited source for web platform market shares is W3Techs. As of June 22, 2026, WordPress was used by 41.5% of all websites and held 59.3% of the CMS market — that is, among the sites using a known content management system. The next competitor, Shopify, is almost eight times smaller.

An honest detail: WordPress's share peaked at ~43.6% in 2024 and has slipped slightly in 2025–2026, as static and custom-built sites have grown. It remains the absolute leader, though, with no competitor even close.

WooCommerce: WordPress for online stores

WooCommerce is a free extension (a "plugin") that turns a WordPress site into a complete online store — with products, a cart and payments. It is owned by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, and has over 7 million active installations.

Here too, the numbers are impressive. According to Store Leads (June 2026), WooCommerce is the world's number 1 e-commerce platform by number of stores — 30.9%, ahead of Shopify at 21.0%. Together, the two account for more than half the market. And W3Techs shows that 48.6% of all identifiable online stores run WooCommerce.

A fair nuance: if you look only at the world's biggest stores (the ones with huge traffic), the ranking flips — there, Shopify leads and WooCommerce comes second. In other words, WooCommerce wins on the number of stores (many of them small and medium-sized), while Shopify is stronger at the top.

And in Romania?

For Romania there is no public, verifiable figure for the total percentage of sites built on WordPress — detailed per-country data usually sits behind paid subscriptions. So we will be honest and look at the best locally measured indicator: e-commerce.

And here the global pattern repeats itself. According to ShopRank (June 2026), WooCommerce is by far the most used online store platform in Romania, with almost 45% of the active stores shipping physical goods. A separate European analysis (Tembi, 2025) confirms the pattern, with an even higher share (~54%). The difference between the sources comes from different methodologies — which is why we read it as a range, not a fixed number.

The business context reinforces the conclusion: Romania's e-commerce market reached about 11.7 billion euros in 2024, up 10% on the previous year (GPeC). More and more businesses sell online — and a good share of them do it on WordPress and WooCommerce.

Advantages and drawbacks

No tool is perfect for everything. Here is, briefly and even-handedly, what you gain and what you need to watch out for with WordPress.

Advantages

• Free, with no vendor lock-in. The software costs nothing (you only pay for hosting and any premium extensions), and the files and content belong to you — you can move the site somewhere else at any time.
• A huge ecosystem. Over 60,000 free extensions and thousands of themes let you add almost any feature — a store, forms, bookings, SEO — without writing code.
• Good for Google. You control titles, URLs, structure and speed, and extensions like Yoast or Rank Math help you optimize.
• Easy to manage. You can publish and update content yourself, with no technical knowledge.
• A large community. Specialists, tutorials and answers are easy to find — a real advantage when you need help.

Drawbacks

• It needs upkeep. Unlike the "all-inclusive" platforms (Wix, Squarespace), you (or a provider) are responsible for updates, backups and security.
• Exposure through extensions. The security risk does not come from WordPress itself, but from the extensions and themes you install — especially outdated ones.
• It can become slow. Too many extensions and cheap hosting make pages load slowly and hurt your SEO.
• Extension quality varies. Anyone can publish an extension, so you have to choose the ones that are maintained, popular and well rated.

You will notice that almost all the drawbacks share one common denominator: upkeep. That is exactly where maintenance comes in.

Why does it need maintenance? (and what can break)

A WordPress site is not "done" after launch. It is more like a car: it runs beautifully if you keep up with its servicing, but neglect it and one day it leaves you stranded. Here is what happens behind the scenes:

• Everything updates often. The WordPress core, themes and extensions constantly get new versions — for features, compatibility and, above all, security. A site left behind becomes vulnerable.
• Updates can conflict. Sometimes an updated extension "clashes" with another one and breaks a page. That is why updates are done in a controlled way, one at a time, with a backup taken beforehand.
• Abandoned extensions are a trap. In 2024 alone, over 1,600 extensions were removed from the official directory, most of them for unfixed security issues. If one of them is on your site, it stays an open door.
• The foundation ages too. The PHP version (the language WordPress runs on) periodically falls out of support. Around a third of WordPress sites still run a PHP version that no longer receives security fixes.
• Performance degrades. The database bloats, unoptimized images pile up, and the site slows down without you noticing.

The real risk does not come from WordPress, but from the lack of upkeep. An updated, monitored site is fast and secure; a forgotten one becomes, over time, slow and vulnerable.

Security: where the problems actually come from

This is where the case for maintenance is clearest. In 2025, 11,334 new vulnerabilities were reported in the WordPress ecosystem (42% more than in 2024). But — and this is the important part — almost all of them were in extensions and themes, not in WordPress itself: 91% in extensions, 9% in themes and only 6 in the WordPress core, across the whole year (Patchstack).

Why does reaction speed matter? Because attacks are automated and fast: the median time until a vulnerability is first exploited is roughly 5 hours, and half of the serious ones are exploited within the first 24 hours. An outdated site is an easy target for the bots scanning the internet around the clock.

You can see it in the incident statistics too: the Sucuri (GoDaddy) security team shows that 39% of compromised sites were running an outdated CMS at the moment of the attack. And the fact that most hacked sites are WordPress largely reflects its huge market share — not a weakness of the platform. The real cause stays the same: unmaintained software.

What proper maintenance looks like

Maintenance is not a luxury — it is the insurance that keeps your site standing. Concretely, it means:

• Tested updates. Core, themes and extensions brought up to date in a controlled way, with a check after every update, so that an update never takes your site down.
• A backup before any change. Regular backups the site can be restored from quickly if something goes wrong. It is the safety net that turns an incident into a simple restore.
• Security and monitoring. Hardening the site, round-the-clock monitoring and fast intervention — plus a clean-up if anything shows up.
• PHP and speed kept current. A supported PHP version, a clean database, optimized images and caching.
• A clear report. Knowing, month after month, what was updated, what backups exist and whether there were any issues — jargon-free.

In short

• WordPress powers ~41.5% of the web and ~59% of the CMS market — the dominant platform, with a huge ecosystem.
• WooCommerce is the world leader in e-commerce (~31% of stores) and clearly dominates in Romania too (~45–54%).
• Its advantages (free, flexible, no vendor lock-in) come bundled with a responsibility: upkeep.
• Almost all vulnerabilities come from outdated extensions and themes, not from WordPress itself — and attacks strike within hours.
• Regular maintenance — tested updates, backups, security, monitoring — keeps your site fast and secure.

Sources

• W3Techs — WordPress and CMS market share (June 2026)
• Store Leads — e-commerce platforms (June 2026)
• ShopRank — e-commerce platforms in Romania and Tembi (2025–2026)
• Patchstack — State of WordPress Security (2025 data) and Wordfence Annual Report 2024
• Sucuri (GoDaddy) — Hacked Website Report
• GPeC — Romania e-commerce report (2024)