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 the WordPress CMS came along and revolutionized the online publishing world. Now, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to tell if a site is being powered by a “blogging” content management system (CMS) like the WordPress publishing platform, or if it’s been created using website-building software. 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.
(It’s Getting Harder To Tell Websites Built With Web Development Tools Vs ‘Blogging’ Software!)
For website owners, understanding the difference between a Content Management System tool like WordPress and other website-building software 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 website 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 fairly 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.
If you chose web site “B”, then you need to learn more about the benefits of using WordPress, why WordPress can give you a beautiful website that could turn out to be much less expensive to build than websites built using web-building software … and how to tell the two apart!
WordPress is the world’s preferred online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a powerful and easy-to-use CMS platform that is ideally suited for local businesses.
Whether your reason for having a website or blog is for personal blogging or business use, WordPress is easy enough for a newbie with no web design skills to use and manage, yet it offers many helpful add-ons that make your web presence more effective when it comes to getting your content published, promoting visitor engagement, generating business leads and sales, scalability, 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 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 to a smaller budget if required?
The Easy Way To Tell If Your Website Was Built Using The WP CMS Platform
Do you need to know if a website is powered by WordPress? Maybe you’ve come here because you’ve read wonderful things about WordPress, and you’re now wondering if your site runs on the WordPress software, or some other CMS.
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 a number of ways to tell if sites are running on WordPress:
Search The Page Source Code
If you know how to access 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 page source code using Firefox)
Let’s say that you are surfing the web and you visit a site that you like, and you would like to know if the site was built with 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 using the browser’s “Find” function …
(Using Firefox’s ‘Find’ function)
This will tell you if the site was built with WordPress or not.
Note: If you cannot see “wp-content” in the page source code, it does not mean that it’s not a WordPress site.
There are other ways to tell if the site runs on WordPress, as we will soon see.
As the focus of this article is to help non “techies”, however, below you will find a number of easy methods you can use to check if your website is powered by WordPress other than scanning the source code.
Ask Your Website Developer
While this may seem like the obvious thing to do, many website developers, for whatever reason, will build clients a website and not tell them it’s been built with WordPress.
If you used a website developer or got somebody else to build your website, just ask your web developer or whoever built your website if your website was built using WordPress.
That was simple, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t get in touch with your website developer, or what if you’ve come across a website that you really like while browsing the net late at night and need to know if the site was built using WordPress?
Powered By WordPress
If the site uses a WP theme and the site theme templates have not been edited, you can typically find a “Powered by WordPress” notice showing below the footer section of the site …
(Powered by WordPress)
If the methods above haven’t helped you, here are some other ways of identifying WordPress sites …
Sites That Tell You If A Website Was Built Using WordPress
Here are a couple of tools that will tell you if a particular website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
Is It WP
(Is It WP)
Is It WP is a free online tool that tells you if a site uses WordPress or not.
Using this site is super easy. Just type in or paste in the address of the site into the search field and click the button.
The tool will then go and search through the URL files 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 is not a WordPress-powered site, you will get a message like the one shown below …
To use this tool, 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 Theme 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.com
(Wappalyzer)
If you browse the net using either Firefox or Chrome and would like to be able to instantly tell if the sites that you are visiting are powered by WordPress, then Wappalyzer is a great extension for your browser.
Wappalyzer helps you identify what type of software is installed in the sites while you are browsing.
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 a very easy to install and easy to use browser add-on.
After installing the Wappalyzer add-on on your web browser, icons will appear in your web browser menu identifying which software is being used by the sites you visit …
If the WordPress icon displays on your browser menu (as the above screenshot shows), then the site uses WordPress.
(A WordPress site!)
Visit the Wappalyzer browser add-on website 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