WordPress is still relevant

WordPress is still relevant. I checked the homepages of a pile of well-known Irish websites. RTÉ and the Irish Times are not running it. Newsrooms, charities, colleges, theatres and estate agencies still are.

It is what a lot of organisations use when more than one person has to publish.

What I counted

A site counts as WordPress when the homepage HTML contains wp-content, wp-includes, wp-json or a link to api.w.org. I fetched them with a normal browser user agent. A short page, a 403 or a "verifying your device" screen means I could not check. I don't use that to name a CMS.

The order in the first list is Tranco for 6 October 2026. A smaller rank means a more popular domain on that global list. I did not crawl every .ie domain. These are well-known sites I went looking for, then sorted.

Version numbers are the ver= on a core WordPress script in that public HTML, or the string WordPress x.y in the page. That is what the site tells a browser. It says nothing about plugins, users or the server.

The share

W3Techs has WordPress on 63.8% of .ie websites whose content management system they could identify. Read that as a share of sites where they could name a CMS. Plenty of sites have no CMS they can see.

Globally, the same source has WordPress on 40.1% of all websites, and on 58.6% of websites with a known CMS. Among sites running WordPress, version 7 is 64.7% and version 6 is 28.3%.

Aguko, in its .ie crawl from late August 2026, counts 103,594 WordPress sites, about 80% of the 129,087 .ie sites it classes as having a CMS. Same kind of denominator, different crawl, so the share is a different number. Both of them put WordPress first.

One other W3Techs cut is easy to mix up with this. Sites whose server is in Ireland, late September 2026, show WordPress at 34.5%. That includes foreign sites hosted here and leaves out Irish sites hosted abroad. It is a hosting statistic. The .ie figure is the one that matters here.

Ten of the biggest I could confirm

For scale: the Irish Times is rank 2,997, and the homepage has no WordPress fingerprint. RTÉ is 3,824, same. Daft is 17,953, same. The Irish Independent is rank 4,159. I got a Cloudflare challenge instead of the page, so that one is left out.

The highest WordPress site in this set is well below those four.

1. The Irish Sun, rank 21,828. The REST API answers with that name. A second fetch of the homepage got a device-check page, so the API is the clean read.
2. Silicon Republic, rank 34,889. Technology news. The public emoji script still says ver=5.4.24.
3. Extra.ie, rank 47,570. The page says WordPress 7.1.3.
4. AgriLand, rank 101,328. The public site sends x-powered-by: Nuxt. The homepage points at cms.agriland.ie/wp-content/themes/agriland-2025/. WordPress is the CMS behind the front end.
5. EVOKE, rank 103,383. Also 7.1.3.
6. Business Post, rank 119,157. The page says 6.8.1.
7. Technological University of the Shannon, rank 159,182. The page says 6.9.9.
8. Transport for Ireland, rank 167,971. I have already been through its sitemap. The homepage is WordPress.
9. Atlantic Technological University, rank 192,928.
10. Goss.ie, rank 212,614.

A technological university outranks Goss.ie.

TG4 is rank 239,518, the Residential Tenancies Board is 381,698, and ComReg is 466,125. All three homepages are WordPress, and ComReg's page says 7.1.2. Rank is why they missed this ten. TG4 and the RTB turn up again below.

News

Full homepages, no WordPress fingerprint: RTÉ, the Irish Times, the Irish Examiner, The Journal, Newstalk, Joe.ie, The 42, Dublin Live, Cork Beo, Today FM, 98FM, Spin 1038 and Red FM. Same result for the Irish Farmers Journal, The Irish Field, Hot Press, The Gloss, Balls.ie, SportsJOE and Off The Ball. The names people reach for first are mostly something else.

Here's the ten that are:

• The Irish Sun. The REST index names the site and links api.w.org.
• Extra.ie. WordPress 7.1.3, with the block library on the homepage.
• Goss.ie. Celebrity news.
• EVOKE. Also 7.1.3.
• AgriLand. Farming news. Nuxt in front, WordPress theme agriland-2025 on cms.agriland.ie behind it. The article HTML in the page carries wp-block-heading.
• Business Post. The page says 6.8.1.
• The Currency. Business news, rank 597,526, on 7.1.3. Smaller than the tabloids, current release.
• Silicon Republic. The page says 5.4.24. That branch started in 2020.
• Shelflife. Retail trade magazine.
• Totally Dublin. City magazine.

Charities

Concern, Oxfam Ireland and the Irish Cancer Society gave me a full homepage with no WordPress in it. These ten did.

• Trócaire, the development agency.
• GOAL, the humanitarian agency.
• Focus Ireland, homelessness. Tranco rank 1,011,991 on 6 October. Well known, modest traffic.
• Barnardos.
• Irish Heart Foundation. The page says 7.1.2.
• ALONE, for older people. 7.1.3.
• Aware.
• Jigsaw, young people's mental health.
• ISPCC, which runs Childline. 7.1.2.
• Age Action.

Appeals, campaigns, the page that has to change that week. That is a CMS job. A plumber with eight pages is a different job, which is the argument in do you need a CMS.

Education

The older university homepages I fetched had no WordPress fingerprint: UCD, Trinity, DCU, University of Galway, UL, Maynooth, UCC and TU Dublin. NCI, DBS, Griffith, MTU and NCAD were the same. I am not naming whatever they do use. I only know it didn't look like WordPress.

The ten that did:

• Atlantic Technological University, rank 192,928. The west and north-west.
• Technological University of the Shannon, rank 159,182. Midlands and Midwest, on 6.9.9. Higher in Tranco than Goss.ie, TG4 and The Currency.
• IADT, Dún Laoghaire, on 7.1.3. Rank 368,317.
• Educate Together, the school patron body.
• Carlow College.
• Oide, the teacher support service.
• NCSE, the National Council for Special Education.
• ETBI, the national office for the Education and Training Boards.
• Cork ETB.
• DDLETB, Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board.

Courses, term dates, policies, news for staff and students. Several people edit that.

Interesting ones

• TG4. The Irish-language broadcaster, rank 239,518, just outside the ten above.
• Abbey Theatre.
• Gate Theatre.
• IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
• The Arts Council.
• Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. The page says 7.1.1.
• EPIC, The Irish Emigration Museum. 7.1.3.
• Electric Picnic, the festival.
• Re-turn, the deposit return scheme. National infrastructure, ordinary WordPress.
• Waterford Whispers News. Satire, on 7.1.3.

Property

Daft, MyHome and PropertyPal gave me a full homepage with none of the fingerprints. Sherry FitzGerald, DNG, Savills and Cairn Homes were the same.

Big, and on WordPress anyway:

• Residential Tenancies Board, rank 381,698. The page says 6.9.10.
• The Housing Agency.
• Glenveagh, the homebuilder.
• Ballymore, the developer.
• IPUT, commercial property. A large owner, a small website: Tranco rank 2,765,864 on 6 October.
• Lisney.
• Knight Frank Ireland.
• Hooke & MacDonald, commercial agency.
• Property Partners, the network.
• Cohalan Downing, in Cork.

Listings, developments, tenancy rules, planning notes. Daft, MyHome and PropertyPal are custom builds. The ten above are WordPress.

So, relevant

If the site is a handful of pages and they change twice a year, you don't need this. I wrote that up separately.

If a newsroom, a charity office, an ETB or an agency has to publish every week, WordPress is still the ordinary choice. AgriLand keeping it behind a Nuxt front end is that same choice. The Silicon Republic install reports 5.4.24, and that branch started in 2020. Run a current branch if you're going to run WordPress.

If you already have one and it works, the work is keeping it current. I'll do that.

Ciprian Popescu runs WP Dublin and builds WordPress plugins at getButterfly. He has been helping Irish businesses get found online since 2002. More about me.