Profiles

WordPress, Theme, Plugin

1. The “Fork” in the Road (2003)
When b2/cafelog went dark, Matt Mullenweg wrote a blog post expressing his desire for a blogging platform that was flexible and web-standard compliant. Mike Little commented on that post, saying, “If you’re serious about forking b2, I would be keen to contribute.”

Launch Date: May 27, 2003 (Version 0.7).

The Philosophy: They focused on “Democratizing Publishing”—making it easy for anyone to have a voice online without needing to be a master coder.

2. The Plugin Revolution (2004)
Version 1.2 (“Mingus”) was a game-changer. It introduced the Plugin API. This allowed developers to extend WordPress functionality without touching the core code. This single decision created the massive ecosystem of themes and plugins we see today.

3. Automattic and the 5-for-500
In 2005, Matt founded Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. While WordPress.org (the software) remains free and community-led, Automattic provides the commercial infrastructure that helps the project scale.

4. Key Milestones in Evolution