May 27th, 2013 marks the 10 year anniversary of the release of WordPress. While I have not used WordPress for all 10 years of its existence, I have used it since 2007 which I believe was around the 2.3 days. I vaguely remember 2.5 being anticipated as a big release. In fact, I think WordPress 2.5 was officially released to the public while WordCamp Dallas was taking place. 2.5 was such a big deal because it was the first time in a long while that the back-end user interface was redesigned. At any rate, Dougal Campbell has started a 10th anniversary blogging project where WordPress users are encouraged to write about some of the historic happenings that have occurred in their life during their use of WordPress starting with the first day.
When WordPress 2.5 was released in March 2008:
- I was 25 years old
- I attended my very first WordCamp
- I started the process of opening WPTavern
When I started using WordPress in June 2007
- I tried to use Joomla for WPTavern before WordPress but failed
- The first version of Joomla was still the most recent version available
- The term Web 2.0 was everywhere you looked
- AJaX was really starting to take off
- Everywhere you looked, there was some sort of generator (favicon, button, web 2.0 logo)
- Domain names with words missing vowels were popular e.g. Flickr
- TechCrunch was really becoming a behemoth of a blog
- Technorati was cool
- Chiclets began the process of nascaration of websites
- The first iPhone was released
Since I started using WordPress
- Got married
- Quit my job of 13 years to work on WPTavern full time
- Became a home owner
- Met a lot of wonderful people passionate about Open Source and WordPress
- Traveled to places I wouldn’t have otherwise thanks to WordCamps
- Have had to clean out my closet twice to make room for WordPress swag
- Facebook won the social networking wars
- Youtube became the worlds greatest time suck
These are just some notable moments in my life while I’ve used WordPress. You’re encouraged to participate in this project by publishing your own set of milestones or reflection points on WordPress and using the tag wp10 as well as the hashtag of #wp10 on Twitter. By the way, until May 27th, you can purchase a WordPress 10th Anniversary T-Shirt from the swag store at a discounted price of $10.00.
Thanks for the shout-out, Jeffro! I think you’re the first person I’ve seen actually make a post!