2015 WordPress Security Survey Results

2015 wordpress security survey

Wordfence conducted their first annual WordPress Security survey last month as part of their WordPress Security Learning Center project that aims to help the WordPress community learn more about security.

To conduct the survey we formed a team of the internal staff combined with external consultants who have experience with industry surveys.

We put together what started off as a very long list of questions. We gradually whittled that down to what we thought were the most important questions that would give us a true picture of the state of WordPress security and would provide some surprising industry insights.

We received 7,375 responses. With the high number of respondents we received, we have achieved statistical significance. This makes the data valuable for bloggers, journalists, and others looking for an authoritative source of data on WordPress security. It provides a true snapshot into the state of WordPress security and the community’s views on security issues affecting WordPress.

RESPONDENTS

2015 wordpress security survey

PLUGINS USED

2015 wordpress security survey

Some interesting statistics from the survey:

  • 76.6% of respondents are male.
  • 83% managed 2 or more sites.
  • 61.1% of the WordPress sites were customized substantially.
  • Only 33% plan to launch a website within 12 months on platform other than WordPress.
  • On average, site managers used 9.84 free plugins and 2.14 paid plugins.
  • 38.9% had their website compromised within the past 12 months.

From the list of favorite WordPress plugins listed on the survey results, four of them are currently used here on JaypeeOnline – Akismet, W3 Total Cache, Wordfence and Yoast SEO. In the list of Most Used Plugin Types, it’s interesting to see that contact form, SEO, anti-spam, and social sharing plugins are more frequently used over data backup plugins. IMO and from experience, I believe that WordPress users should make it a priority to have a data/database backup solution.

I’m not sure how the respondents were chosen as it is not stated in the blog post. I’m a Wordfence user, but I didn’t receive an invitation to participate in this survey so they probably have a different list where they selected random users.

Wordfence is encouraging anyone to share and republish the data collected from the survey in any way they can as long as Wordfence gets proper credit for it.

To learn more and get the complete details, check out the official results of the 2015 WordPress Security Survey. If you want to learn more on how to secure your WordPress site, make sure you check out Wordfence’s WordPress Security Learning Center.

Anyone participated in or read the results of this survey? Is there any particular part of the survey results or specific statistic that is the most interesting or significant to you? Do you think that the data gathered from this set number of respondents is enough to represent the whole WordPress community? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

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