Apparently 10 years ago today the first release of WordPress was let loose on the world. It is now the most popular web publishing tool in the world by a looooonnnnggg way – not bad for a small, trans-Atlantic open source project.

My career has been pretty entangled with WordPress during that decade – I was never a developer, or a designer…or really someone with any useful skills! WordPress came along and suddenly I could do things myself. The combination of the fabled ‘5 Minute Install’ (like Jamies Olivers 15 Minute Meals I think you have to multiply by three!), themes and plug-ins gave me unimagined power and WordPress.com gave me the freedom to just get on with my blogging (and still does to this day – unless Ghost delivers big!). The incredible community surrounding it meant I was never short of answers when I inevitably screwed something up.

WordPress has been the foundation of many of my favourite projects over the years and even as many of my developer and designer friends cursed it for reasons too complex for my little mind to understand I continued to support it. I see it more and more as a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ for the web – and as I mentioned recently – less and less of a blog platform but there is nothing wrong with that – it simply outgrew its humble beginnings.

So “Happy Birthday’ WP and thanks!