When the “blogging revolution” first began, blogs looked like blogs and websites looked like websites. You could easily tell the difference between the two.
Then WordPress came along and revolutionized web publishing. Now, it’s getting almost impossible to tell blogs and websites apart. Not so much in terms of what the sites are being used for, but in terms of web design and also being able to tell what’s “under the hood”.
(It’s Getting Harder To Tell Websites Built With Web Development Tools Vs ‘Blogging’ Software!)
For many website owners, understanding the difference between a CMS tool like WordPress and other website-building software is huge, not so much in terms of the technical differences, but more importantly, regarding the areas that the majority of website owners are mostly concerned with, like web development costs, ease of use, ability to maintain the website up-to-date, managing web content, etc.
Think about this …
Which of these options would you choose?
A) An eye-catching, professional-looking website that is actually expensive to build, or
B) The same eye-catching, professional-looking site, but at a cost that turns out to be significantly less than the cost of getting option ”A” above built.
If you picked site “B”, then you need to know more about WordPress, why WordPress can be used to create an expensive-looking website that will typically end up costing you far less to build than websites built using other website editor tools … and how to tell the two apart!
WordPress is the world’s most popular online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a flexible and powerful content management system suitable for most types of business applications.
Whether your reason for having a web site is for personal blogging or business use, WordPress is easy enough for a novice with no knowledge of coding to use, and offers many helpful features that make your website highly effective in terms of getting your content published, promoting visitor interaction, generating business leads and sales, enhancing your site’s functionality, etc.
With almost one in every five websites around the world currently being powered by WordPress, chances are that if you already own a website, yours is also a WordPress site.
And if you don’t have a website yet, or are considering getting a website built, then wouldn’t it be great to be able to show your web developer an existing site with the design and layout that you like, know that it was built with WordPress and that you can, therefore, get something similarly built for your business quite inexpensively?
Is It A WP Site?
Do you need to know if your website is powered by WordPress? Maybe you’ve come here because you’ve heard about all of the great advantages of using WordPress, and you’re now wondering if your site was built using 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 a site has been built using WordPress:
View Your 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 an obvious telltale footprint that the site was built using WordPress …
(How to view your web page source code in the Firefox web browser)
Let’s say that you are browsing online and you visit a web site that you like, and you’re wondering if the site runs on WordPress …
First, bring up the site’s source code on your screen, using the methods described above.
In the page’s source code, search for “wp-content” either by scanning the code …
Or use the browser’s “Find” function …
(Using Firefox’s ‘Find’ function)
This will tell you if the site runs on WordPress or not.
Note: If you are unable to see “wp-content” in the page source code, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the website is not a WordPress site.
There are other ways to tell if the site runs on WordPress, as we will soon be discussing.
As the focus of this post is to help non “techies”, however, we have listed below a number of easy ways to check if your site is built using WordPress other than looking at the source code.
Ask Your Webmaster
While this may seem like the most obvious thing to do, a number of website development agencies, for whatever reason, will build their clients a website and not tell them it’s been built with WordPress.
If you have an existing web site and you can’t tell what application is driving it, just ask your webmaster or whoever built your web site if your website has been built with WordPress.
That was simple, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t get in touch with the person who looks after your website, or what if you’ve come across a site that you really like while surfing the net late at night and you really need to know if it was built with WordPress?
Powered By WordPress
If the site uses a WordPress theme and the web theme templates have not been modified, you can often see a “Powered by WordPress” notice showing in the footer section of the site …
(Proudly Powered by WordPress – site footer section)
If the methods above aren’t helpful to you, here are some other ways of identifying WordPress sites …
Online Tools That Tell You If A Website Runs On WordPress
Here are a some sites that will tell you if your website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
Is It WP
(IsItWP.com)
Is It WP? is a free online tool that can check very quickly if a site uses WordPress or not.
Using this tool is really quite easy. Just enter the address of the website into the URL field and click the button.
The tool will then go and search through the URL pages and tell you if the site was built using WordPress, and if so, it will even tell you which version of WordPress the site is currently using …
If the site has not been built with WordPress, you will get a message like the one shown in the screenshot 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 – Add-On For Firefox & Chrome Web Browser)
If you browse the net using either the Firefox or Chrome browsers and would like to be able to tell if the sites that you are visiting use WordPress, then Wappalyzer is a useful add-on for your browser.
Wappalyzer tells you what type of software is installed on 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.”
Wappalyzer is also an easy to install and easy to use web browser add-on.
Once you have installed Wappalyzer on your web browser, icons will appear in your browser menu identifying which technologies are installed on the sites you are visiting …
If the WordPress icon displays on the browser menu (as shown in the screenshot above), then the site has been built with WordPress.
(This site is built using WordPress!)
To learn more, go here:
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:
I hope that you have found this tutorial useful.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now