As you may know, WordPress celebrated its 20th anniversary on May 27, 2023. This exciting milestone ushered in many celebrations, with WordPress communities across the globe gathering to commemorate and reminisce. Check out the official anniversary site for a full list of all the meetups — which illustrate just how impactful WordPress truly is.
In honor of this landmark occasion, WordPress unveiled a new set of commemorative logos, replacing the original muted blue with a more vivid, eye-catching shade. Additionally, WordPress contributor Emalina DeRosia designed a 20th anniversary edition of our beloved mascot: wapuu.
What is Wapuu?
WordPress users everywhere have likely noticed a little cartoon accompanying WordPress products or making appearances at meetups and WordCamps. This endearing mascot is “wapuu” and it has an interesting history.
The History of Wapuu
How did wapuu become a cultural cornerstone for WordPress? The story begins at a WordCamp after-party over a decade ago.
Conceptualization
In 2009, WordCamp Tokyo had come to a successful close. Amid the after-party festivities, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg asked attendees to brainstorm ways to boost WordPress visibility in Japan. Noting the popularity of Firefox’s Japanese mascot, Foxkeh, someone suggested creating a WordPress mascot for the Japanese community. Mullenweg immediately loved the idea, and the creative process began.
Design
Mullenweg got the ball rolling right away, hiring Japanese community manager Naoko Takano to help bring the mascot idea to life. Takano soon chose artist Kazuko Kaneuchi, already known for creating several OSS mascots, and she immediately got to work.
On May 12, 2010, Kaneuchi submitted drafts for 12 different characters to represent WordPress, most of which were interacting with the WordPress “W” logo in some way. After reviewing the options, Japanese WordPress admins selected the creature we now know as wapuu.
Though Kaneuchi was offered payment, she refused, giving her design away as a free gift — yet another example of the community mindset that makes WordPress what it is today.
Release & Name
Wapuu made its very first appearance at WordCamp Fukuoka on February 19, 2011. WordPress Japan also released a blog post to get the word out and create a buzz around wapuu — who at that point didn’t have a name.
It wasn’t until later that year in August when, through a community poll and forum, the WordPress community in Japan voted to name the mascot “wappy.” Unfortunately, wappy was already trademarked, so the runner-up choice, wapuu, became the official name of WordPress Japan’s mascot.
Wapuu Today
Though wapuu was originally created to represent WordPress Japan, the mascot is now ubiquitous with WordPress as a whole. Like WordPress itself, wapuu is an open-source design under the GPLv2 license. Users are able to tweak wapuu as desired, putting their own spin on a character that brings our community together. In fact, one of the reasons admins chose this particular design by Kaneuchi was for its adaptability. Since its inception, users have been able to create their own variations of wapuu.
Wapuu Dashboard Pet
One fun offshoot of wapuu is the Wapuu Dashboard Pet plugin. This software transforms wapuu into a “virtual pet” for your WordPress dashboard. Not only is the wapuu pet cute, but it’s also a fun way to keep your WordPress site running efficiently and smoothly. Wapuu pet keeps track of WordPress updates — growing healthier with every update but sicker if you fail to install the latest plugins and themes.
Happy 20th Anniversary, WordPress
And there you have it — the history behind WordPress’ delightful mascot, wapuu.
Twenty years is an incredible milestone, and we hope you had the chance to celebrate with your own WordPress community this past May. If you haven’t already, be sure to download the commemorative wapuu design here.
