Some of the most visited websites in the world run on WordPress right now. NASA, the White House, TechCrunch, Rolling Stone, TIME, Metro.co.uk and the Harvard Gazette all publish on it today, and every example on this page is backed by a named public source. According to the technology survey firm W3Techs, WordPress powered just over 41 per cent of all websites as of July 2026. If anyone has told you WordPress is only for hobby blogs, here is the counter evidence.
We first published this page in 2014, when our examples were Marks and Spencer’s business site, Metro, Russell Brand, Leeds City College and Reader’s Digest. More than a decade on, the names have changed but the point has not: WordPress scales from a one page brochure site to a national newspaper, and beyond.
NASA (nasa.gov)
In 2023, NASA relaunched nasa.gov on WordPress, moving off Drupal. The agency chose the enterprise WordPress VIP platform, whose published case study describes the modernisation programme, and the build is listed in the official WordPress.org showcase. Lone Rock Point, the agency that led the project, reports 68,698 migrated pages in its own case study, and WP Tavern covered why NASA picked WordPress in the first place. What it proves: if WordPress can meet the security, accessibility and scale requirements of a federal space agency, it can certainly handle your services pages and product catalogue.
The White House (whitehouse.gov)
As documented in the official WordPress.org showcase, whitehouse.gov runs on WordPress, and it has stayed on WordPress through changes of administration and complete redesigns since 2017. The agency 10up documents its full rebuild of the site among its case studies. Presidents, designs and priorities changed; the publishing platform did not. What it proves: WordPress supports high stakes publishing where pages must go live at a fixed minute on a fixed day, and where communications staff, not developers, do the publishing.
TechCrunch
TechCrunch, one of the best known technology news sites, publishes on WordPress VIP. Agency 10up lists TechCrunch among its build and support clients, and WordPress VIP itself has published a talk on how TechCrunch built its subscription paywall on WordPress. What it proves: WordPress is not just for free content. Paywalls, memberships and commercial products can run on the same platform as the articles themselves.
Rolling Stone
After Penske Media acquired Rolling Stone, rollingstone.com was rebuilt on WordPress. The engineering agency XWP published a detailed case study on the migration, which covered more than 250,000 pieces of content from decades of archives, and the site is listed in the WordPress.org showcase. What it proves: moving an enormous legacy archive into WordPress is a solved problem. If Rolling Stone’s back catalogue survived the trip, your ten year old website will too.
TIME (time.com)
TIME moved time.com to WordPress and the WordPress VIP platform in 2015, according to WordPress VIP’s own case study, and the site appears in the WordPress.org showcase. VIP has also published a case study on how time.com scales for its Person of the Year traffic spikes. What it proves: a media brand publishing since 1923 trusts WordPress with its busiest days of the year. Traffic surges are a hosting and caching question, not a reason to avoid the CMS.
Metro UK (metro.co.uk)
Metro was on our original 2014 list, and it is the survivor of that list. The WordPress VIP blog announced Metro.co.uk’s migration from a custom CMS to WordPress in December 2012, and Metro development environments are still visible on VIP’s hosting infrastructure today. What it proves: longevity. A national newspaper website has been publishing on WordPress for well over a decade without needing to start again on something else.
The Harvard Gazette
Harvard University’s official news site runs on WordPress and is listed in the WordPress.org showcase. The WordPress agency Human Made has written about the redesigned site, singling out its accessibility work, and the design studio Upstatement documents the build in its own case study. What it proves: institutions with strict accessibility and editorial standards choose WordPress, and a well built theme can meet them.
What small businesses should take from this
Every site above runs on the same core software you can install yourself in an afternoon. The big names pay for enterprise hosting, custom themes and agency support, but the publishing engine is identical. Three practical lessons:
- Start on solid foundations. A clean setup saves you months of untangling later. Our guide to starting a WordPress blog walks through the setup step by step.
- Publish consistently. The brands above win because they treat their websites as publications, not brochures. If you are new to it, read how to start a WordPress blog.
- Measure what happens next. Content without measurement is guesswork. Our SEO tools hub compares the tools we actually use for rankings, audits and reporting.
One honest note to finish. WordPress is not the only answer, and these days we build many client sites on Astro, because a small brochure site is often faster and safer as static files. But for content heavy, multi author sites, WordPress has earned its place, and it is where Luckywebs started: our founder Mo Rafi taught WordPress at Google Campus London from 2012. You can read more in our story. We will always tell you which tool fits your project before we talk about anything else.
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