It used to be that blogs looked like blogs and websites looked like websites. You could easily tell blogs and websites apart.
Then WordPress came along and revolutionized online publishing. Now, it’s getting 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 kind of web application is actually powering the site.
(Can You Tell Which Application Websites Are Built With?)
For website owners, understanding the difference between a Content Management System tool like WordPress and other website-building tools is huge, not so much in terms of the technical differences, but more importantly, regarding the areas that matter to most website owners, such as web development costs, ease of use, ability to keep 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 is actually expensive to build, or
B) The same eye-catching, professional-looking website, but at a much cheaper cost than the cost of getting site ”A”.
If you went with site “B”, then you need to learn more about WordPress, why WordPress can be used to create an attractive, professional-looking and fully functional website that will normally end up costing you far less to build than websites which are built with other web development tools … and how to tell these apart!
WordPress is the world’s leading online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a powerful CMS platform that is ideally suited for most business needs.
Whether your reason for having a digital presence is for personal blogging or business use, WordPress is easy enough for a novice with no web design skills to use, and offers many helpful tools that make your web presence extremely effective when it comes to getting your content published and indexed by search engines, 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 thinking of getting a website 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 something similarly built for your business quite inexpensively?
How To Tell If A Website Was Built With WordPress
Do you need to know if a website uses WordPress? Maybe you’ve come here because you’ve read or heard wonderful things about WordPress, and you’re now wondering if your site runs on WordPress, or some other website 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 using WordPress:
View Your Source Code
If you know how to bring up 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 tell-tale footprints …
(View the page source code in the Firefox web browser)
Suppose that you are surfing the web 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 manually …
Or using your browser’s “Find” function …
(Use Firefox’s ‘Find’ function)
This will quickly tell you if the site runs on WordPress or not.
Note: If you do not find “wp-content” within the source code, it does not necessarily mean that you are not looking at a WordPress site.
There are other ways to find out if a site runs on the WordPress software, as we will soon be discussing.
As the focus of this post is to try and help non-technical users, however, we have listed below a number of easy methods you can use to check if your web site is powered by WordPress other than looking through the source code.
Simply Ask Your Webmaster
While this may seem like the obvious thing to do, some web developers, for whatever reason, may build clients a website and not tell them it’s WordPress.
If you have an existing website and you’re not sure what application is driving it, just ask your webmaster or whoever built your site if it was built with WordPress.
That was simple, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t reach your webmaster, or what if you’ve come across a site that you really like while browsing the net late at night and you really need to know if the site was built with WordPress?
Check Below Footer
If the site uses a WP theme and the templates have not been customized, you will often see a “Powered by WordPress” notice showing in the footer section of the site …
(Powered by WordPress – footer area)
If the methods above aren’t helpful to you, here are some other ways of telling whether a website was built with WordPress or not …
Sites That Can Tell You If A Website Is Built With WordPress
Here are a couple of tools that can tell you if a website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
Is It WP
(Is It WP)
IsItWP.com is a free tool that lets you check if a website runs on WordPress or not.
Using this site is super simple. Just type in or paste in the URL of the website into the search field and click the button.
It will then go through the URL pages and tell you if the site was built using WordPress, and if so, it will even tell you the version of WordPress it is currently using …
If the site is not powered by WordPress, you will see a message similar to 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 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 use either the Firefox or Chrome web browser and would like to be able to know if the sites that you are visiting are WP sites, then Wappalyzer is a great extension to add to your web 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.”
Wappalyzer is also easy to install.
Once you have installed the Wappalyzer add-on on your web browser, icons will display in your web browser, next to the site URL identifying which technologies are installed on all the sites you visit …
If you see the WordPress icon displayed on your browser menu (as shown in the screen shot above), then the site has been built with WordPress.
(This site is built using WordPress!)
To download and install Wappalyzer 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, visit the site below:
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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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group