Once upon a time and not so long ago, blogs looked like blogs and websites looked like websites. One could easily tell the difference.
Then WordPress came along and revolutionized web publishing. Now, it’s getting more and more difficult to tell blogs and websites apart. Not so much in terms of what the sites are being used for, but in terms of website design and also being able to tell what type of web application is actually powering the site.
(Can You Tell Which Application A Website Has Been Built With?)
For many website owners, understanding the difference between a CMS application like WordPress and other website-building tools is huge, not so much in terms of the technical differences, but more importantly, in terms of the areas that matter to most website owners, like web development costs, ease of use, ability to maintain the site up-to-date, managing content, etc.
Think about this …
Which of these options would you choose?
A) An eye-catching, professional-looking website that turns out to be quite expensive to build, or
B) The same eye-catching, professional-looking website, but at a cost that is significantly less than the cost of getting site ”A”.
If you picked web site “B”, then you need to know more about the benefits of using WordPress, why WordPress can provide you with an eye-catching website that will typically turn out to be much less expensive to build than websites which use website-building software … and how to tell these two types apart!
WordPress is the world’s most popular online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a budget-friendly content management application suitable for small, medium and even large businesses.
Whether your reason for having an online presence is for personal blogging or business use, WordPress is easy enough for a beginner with no technical knowledge to use, yet it offers many helpful functions that make your web site more effective in terms of getting your content published and indexed by search engines, promoting visitor interaction, generating business leads and sales, enhancing your site’s capabilities, scalability, etc.
With almost one in every five websites around the world being powered by WordPress, chances are that if you already own a website, your site is also driven by WordPress.
And if you don’t have a website yet, or are thinking of getting one built, then wouldn’t it be great to be able to show your web developer an existing website with the design and layout that you like, know that it was built with WordPress and that you can, therefore, get a similar site built for your business for a much smaller cost?
Is My Website Built With WordPress? Tell-Tale Signs & WP-Checking Tools
Do you need to know if a website was built using WordPress? Maybe you’ve come to this page because you’ve heard about WordPress, and you’re now wondering if your site runs on WordPress, or some other CMS application.
Also, have you ever looked at a competitor’s website and wondered what they’re doing to try and get better results online?
Knowing if your competitor’s site is built with WordPress can tell you a few things about their strategies and methods, such as what themes or plugins they are using.
Here are some simple methods you can use to quickly tell if sites are built with WordPress:
View The Page Source Code
If you know how to search the source code of a web page (e.g. Firefox Menu > Web Developer > Page Source if using Firefox, or Google Menu > More Tools > View Source if using Google Chrome), you can look for a telltale footprint …
(How to view your web page source code in Firefox)
Suppose that you are browsing online and you visit a website that you like, and you would like to know if the site runs on WordPress …
First, bring up the site’s source code on your screen, using the methods described above.
Once the source code of the site loads on your screen, search for words like “wp-content” either by visually scanning the code …
Or use your browser’s “Find” function …
(Use Firefox’s ‘Find’ function)
This will tell you if the site runs on WordPress or not.
Note: If you cannot find “wp-content” within the page source code, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the site you’re looking at is not a WordPress site.
There are other ways to find out if a site runs on WordPress, as we will soon see.
As the focus of this post is to help non-technical users, however, we have listed below a number of easy ways to check if your site is powered by WordPress other than looking at the source code.
Simply Ask Your Web Developer
While this may seem like the obvious thing to do, some website developers, for whatever reason, may build their clients a website and not tell them it’s WordPress.
If you have an existing website and you can’t tell what application is driving it, just ask your web developer or whoever built your site if it has been built with WordPress.
That was simple, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t reach your webmaster, or what if you’ve come across a website that you really like while browsing the net and would like to know if it was built using WordPress?
Powered By WordPress
If the site uses a WP theme where the theme templates have not been modified, you can often see a “Powered by WordPress” message displayed at the bottom of the site …
(Powered by WordPress – footer area)
If these simple methods haven’t helped you, here are some other ways of telling whether a site was built using WordPress or not …
Sites That Tell You If A Website Runs On WordPress
Here are a some online applications that can tell you if a particular website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
IsItWP.com
(Is It WordPress?)
Is It WP? is a free online tool that tells you if a site was built using WordPress or not.
Using this site is really quite simple. Just paste the URL of the website into the search field and click the button.
It will then go and search through the URL pages and tell you if the site was built using WordPress, and if so, which version of WordPress the site is currently using …
If the site is not powered by WordPress, you will see a message like the one below …
To visit this site, go here:
Advanced WP Theme Checker by Satori
(WordPress Theme Detector)
WordPress Theme Detector by Satori Studio is a free tool that can help determine whether or not a website uses WordPress as its CMS engine; it will also tell you which theme the site is using and provide a link to the theme’s official page.
To use this tool, paste the URL of a web page (it doesn’t have to be the home page) into the ‘Enter website URL’ field and click on the ‘What WordPress theme is that?’ button …
(Enter website URL and click the button)
The Detector will automatically scan the website and output its theme information …
(WordPress Theme Detector displays theme results)
If a website is built with WordPress but the theme is too customized to contain any traces of its origins, the Detector will still let you know it’s a WP site by outputting a message on the right.
(Modified WordPress theme message)
If the website is not using WordPress at all, the tool will also let you know …
(This website is not WordPress)
You can try the Detector yourself by visiting this link:
Wappalyzer
(Wappalyzer)
If you use either the Firefox or Chrome browser and want to be able to know if the sites that you are visiting are WP-powered, then Wappalyzer is a very useful add-on to add to your browser.
Wappalyzer identifies what software is installed in the sites you are visiting.
According to their website …
“Wappalyzer is a browser extension that uncovers the technologies used on websites. It detects content management systems, eCommerce platforms, web servers, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools and many more.”
It’s also a very easy web browser add-on to install and use.
After installing Wappalyzer, icons will appear in your browser menu, in the URL field allowing you to see which technologies are being used by all the sites you visit …
If the WordPress icon shows up on the browser menu (as shown in the screenshot above), then the site has been built with WordPress.
(This site uses WordPress!)
Go here to visit the Wappalyzer web browser add-on site:
SpyBar
(SpyBar – Browser Addon For WordPress)
SpyBar is a browser addon that lets you ‘reverse engineer’ any WordPress site you visit and see which WordPress plugins and themes are being used, right inside your web browser …
(SpyBar – Discover WordPress Plugins And Themes Used By Your Competitors)
SpyBar can be installed as a browser extension on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and is compatible with PC and Mac.
To download or learn more about SpyBar, go here:
Plugin Sniper
(Plugin Sniper – Find out what plugins a WordPress site is using)
Plugin Sniper lets you find out what plugins a WordPress site is using. This is a useful tool if you want to know what WordPress plugins are being used by your competitors.
Plugin Sniper is also a useful tool for researching what kinds of plugins businesses in certain niches are using …
(Search WordPress sites by categories and location)
To download or learn more about Plugin Sniper, visit the site below:
We hope you have found the above the information in this tutorial useful.
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