14 DAY TRIAL // On the eve of WordPress 3.2's debut, the group of developers behind the very popular blogging software have announced that the previous and still current version, WordPress 3.1, has now been downloaded more than 15 million times, as is evident from WordPress' own statistics page.
It's an important milestone for WordPress and the number by itself would be quite impressive, were it not for the fact that there significantly more WordPress users on the web.
There are well over 20 million WordPress installs in the wild, perhaps as many as 25 million, again, according to WordPress provided numbers.
That means that perhaps 10 million WordPress blogs out there are not running the most recent version and are probably running an older, insecure one.
Some may be already running the upcoming WordPress 3.2 which is very close to launch, with the third release candidate being made available last week, but that's unlikely to be a big enough number to make a difference.
There are a couple of other explanations for the discrepancies. It could very well be that the numbers aren't entirely accurate, after all, they're provided simply as a curiosity for users.
The other, probably the most plausible, explanation is that a lot of people are installing WordPress from the pre-configured packages provided by their hosting services.
Popular hosting companies may have thousands, tens of thousands or more WordPress installs, all from the same source, which would only be counted as one download in the official stats.
What's more, it took WordPress several months to get 15 million people to upgrade - WordPress 3.1 was launched in late February. WordPress 3.2 should be coming very soon, there are some hints that it may be as soon later today, so the cycle starts all over again, with users being notified about the new version and eventually upgrading their blogs.
WordPress 3.1 and WordPress 3.2 RC3 are available for download here.