Happy Birthday, WordPress

I learned from the news feeds on the Dash­board for this soft­ware, that today is Word­Press’s ‘offi­cial’ fifth Birth­day (it was actu­al­ly 5 years ago back in the begin­ning of the year). While that’s pret­ty young, in soft­ware years it’s prob­a­bly all the way into some­where in the ear­ly teens. The five year mark places the soft­ware’s birth in 2003 at some of the dark­est times of the post-Inter­net bub­ble burst­ing. That such impres­sive and pow­er­ful soft­ware could come out of those times is com­fort­ing, in a way. No mat­ter how poor the eco­nom­ic cli­mate, new soft­ware can sur­vive, and actu­al­ly begin to grow in com­plex­i­ty (and user base).

At the most recent North­ern Voice, the Annu­al blog­ging con­fer­ence held here in Van­cou­ver, the keynote speak­er was Matt Mul­len­weg, the founder of Word­Press. I locat­ed his keynote (Thanks to At Large Media, who record­ed it and post­ed it), and thought that on this occa­sion, it might be nice to include it here, so here it is:

[audio:Mullenweg_Keynote_at_Northern_Voice_08.mp3]

So, I imag­ine that at the moment, the cham­pagne corks are pop­ping in New York City (there is a par­ty planned for 9PM in San Fran­cis­co, so we can raise a glass here to them then, as well). Hap­py Birth­day, Word­Press, and con­grat­u­la­tions to Matt Mul­len­weg all of the oth­er folks who worked on it.