Many of us have felt thorns too. Me included.
I reconciled with the fact that “it’s not one OR the other, because I can use both”. In the process, I also learned Joomla. So now I have WP, CP, and Joomla as tools in my belt. Having three choices is better than having only one.
CP began in late 2018 to cater to the needs of people (developers, users, and everybody in between) that just need something simple like old WP was to build something.
As I see it, every CMS has its place. The success of CP is not in the NUMER of people using it, it’s in the fact that it started in 2018 and in 2023 it’s open for business and has a v2 in the making.
The fact is, when there is no alternative to something you don’t quite like, you have to swallow it anyway because it’s the only thing that there is.
Now, people are not obliged to swallow the WP block editor without reacting, there is CP. and there are other CMSs too. Some will come to CP, some others will go elsewhere. CP will continue to go ahead.
I have done some research about Joomla, it has a very small slice of market share globally compared to WP, but it continues to thrive and there is an ecosystem of paid and free extensions for it. Talking with some Joomlaers they explained to me that even if a small number of people use it compared to WP it is worthwhile developing because it works well and many people earn a living with it even with that small market share. The same applies to CP.
You ask if the numbers will grow, well… IMHO we can expect a certain growth statistically speaking. This is confirmed by the fact that many more people use CP now compared to the beginning.
CP is here to stay and we are committed to developing it further and I think this community can sustain an increase in the number of people using it, should this happen down the road.
The fact that we are going to release a v2 very soon thanks to our core contributors is to me enough proof that the CMS is here to stay.
The v2 will not only bring us up to date with libraries and other security fixes and features WP 6 has that we want in CP, but it will be the launch of the Plugin/Themes Directory included in the dashboard (so users will be able to manage plugins and themes for CP directly from the dashboard of the site) - this will encourage people to list their plugins and themes in the dir also (this happened in WP also, when the repos were made available people started to submit their plugin and themes gaining visibility from that).
As you can see v2 is a very huge commitment to the community. It means not only that CP is here to stay but that it welcomes contributions in every form (even publishing a theme/plugin is a form of contribution. people might not consider a small plugin a big contribution to the project, but when published in the directory they are visible to every CP user, and not only that, they increase CP awareness around the world just by being listed).
Another thing to consider is that the population is growing and this means that every day the number of people needing to build their websites is increasing.
At present, 58% of sites worldwide are built with a CMS, the rest is coded from scratch.
In 2011 around 76% of websites were coded from scratch, in 2022 this percentage has fallen to the 33%, this means that there is a statistical increase in the use of CMS to build sites.
As of now, the market is more or less like this:
- WP market share is around 45%
- Wix is taking about 10%
- Squarespace about 3,7%
- Joomla just the 1,72%
If the number of people was to remain the same, to gain market we would need to see a decrease in other CMS numbers, instead, people needing sites are increasing, which means there is space for CP to grow even if these big players retain their market share.
Source for the above stats here.
Early 2022 Joost of Yoast SEO wrote a post that you can read here, to discuss the fact that WP statistics were slightly falling for the first time in 18 years (this means that WP continued to grow all along these 18 years!). It is common even for big players to have fluctuations in market share, and this can come to our advantage too.
Considering all this, I can’t predict the future by saying there will be another year of CP and I can’t say how many people will migrate to CP from WP or from other places, but I surely can say that statistics are very well in CP’s favor.
