Web technologies of the year 2013

Posted by Matthias Gelbmann on 6 January 2014 in News, AdRoll, Advertising Networks, Content Delivery, Content Management, GlobalSign, JavaScript Libraries, JQuery, JQuery CDN, Nginx, Operating Systems, PHP, Pinterest, Server-side Languages, Social Widgets, SSL Certificate Authorities, Traffic Analysis Tools, Ubuntu, Web Servers, WordPress, Yandex.Metrica

We have published the top rising technologies of a year before (2010, 2011, 2012), however we changed the format this year by determining winners per category.

To identify the winners, we compared the number of sites using a technology on Jan 1, 2013 with the corresponding number on Jan 1, 2014. We use the difference of these numbers, rather than a percentage, because that would favor technologies with a tiny user base at the beginning of the year. As in all our surveys, we restrict the numbers to the top 10 million sites, see technology surveys for more details.

These are the technologies that gained most sites in 2013:

Content Management System of the Year

WordPress

WordPress is the clear leader in this category and has also been the fastest growing CMS for a long time.

Recent winners

2012  WordPress
2011  WordPress
2010  WordPress

Server-side Programming Language of the Year

PHP

With a market share of over 80%, no other language even comes close to PHP in website development. The fact that this share is still growing is quite amazing.

Recent winners

2012  PHP
2011  PHP
2010  PHP

JavaScript Library of the Year

jQuery

jQuery is the de-facto standard for client-side JavaScript development to an extent that people wonder why it has not yet became part of the language.

Recent winners

2012  jQuery
2011  jQuery

SSL Certificate Authority of the Year

GlobalSign

GlobalSign only ranks 4th in that category, but it has gained more sites in 2013 than any other certificate provider.

Social Widget of the Year

Pinterest

Pinterest moved into the top 5 social widgets only recently, but it is the social service that more site started to use in 2013 than any of the bigger social networks.

Recent winners

2012  Facebook

Web Server of the Year

Nginx

2013 was a fantastic year for Nginx: It overtook Microsoft IIS as the #2 web server, and it even became the #1 server among top 1000 sites.

Recent winners

2012  Nginx
2011  Nginx
2010  Nginx

Operating System of the Year

Ubuntu

Due to its constant growth, Ubuntu became the #2 Linux distribution used on web servers.

Recent winners

2012  Ubuntu
2011  Ubuntu
2010  Windows

JavaScript Content Delivery Network of the Year

jQuery CDN

Benefiting from the growth of jQuery, the jQuery CDN became the fastest growing JavaScript CDN on the web.

Traffic Analysis Tool of the Year

Yandex.Metrika

The Russian Yandex.Metrika ranks third in that category, and it gained more sites than any other service.

Recent winners

2012  Google Analytics
2011  Google Analytics
2010  Google Analytics

Advertising Network of the Year

AdRoll

AdRoll is a relatively new network that very quickly became the #3 ad network on the web. The growth in 2013 was quite spectacular.

Recent winners

2012  DoubleClick
2011  Google AdSense

Congratulations to all the winners for their extraordinary achievements in the last year.

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