WordPress began in 2003 as a fork of an earlier blogging platform called b2/cafelog. When the development of b2/cafelog ceased, Matt Mullenweg, a user of the platform, proposed creating a new system based on it, but with improved features. Mike Little, another user, responded to Mullenweg’s idea, and together they initiated the project.
On May 27, 2003, Mullenweg and Little released the first version of WordPress, version 0.7. This initial release, based on the b2/cafelog codebase, included a redesigned admin interface and support for XHTML 1.1-compliant templates. The name “WordPress” was suggested by Christine Selleck Tremoulet, a friend of Mullenweg.
A significant turning point came in 2004 with the release of WordPress 1.2, which introduced the plugin architecture. This allowed developers to extend WordPress’s functionality with custom plugins, greatly increasing its versatility. The platform continued to evolve, adding features like pages, comment moderation, and the default Kubrick theme in subsequent versions.
WordPress’s open-source nature and the strong community that developed around it contributed to its rapid growth, transforming it from a simple blogging tool into the widely used content management system it is today.