Free Knowledge Culture Calendar/July 3
Today in 2001 the first version of b2/cafelog was released. This weblog content management system was later reborn as WordPress and, with its particular beginner-friendliness, went for world domination. Meanwhile more than half of all websites are built using a content management system, far more than half of them with WordPress. It has evolved from a specialized blogging tool to an ecosystem with a huge selection of themes and plugins that cover diverse needs.
Its status and ease of use make this often needlessly complex system a natural choice for many simpler projects that do not actually require dynamic page generation. Coupled with this hard-to-control diversity, this makes it a very attractive target for attacks. To mitigate this, it was the first CMS to implement automatic software updates, one of the most effective practical measures against security flaws in software.