When the “blogging revolution” first began, 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 increasingly harder to tell the difference between what software is being used to build the two. 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’s “under the hood”.
(Can You Tell Which Application Is Powering Your Website?)
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 the majority of website owners care about, such as 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 expensive to build, or
B) The same eye-catching, professional-looking website, but at a tiny fraction of the cost of getting option ”A” built.
If you chose website “B”, then you need to know more about WordPress, why WordPress can give you an attractive, professional-looking and fully functional website that could end up costing you far less to build than websites which use website-building software … and how to tell these two types apart!
WordPress is the world’s leading online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a powerful and easy-to-use content management tool that is ideally suited for most types of business applications.
Whether your reason for having an online presence is for personal blogging or business use, WordPress is easy enough for a newbie with no web design skills to use, yet it offers an array of helpful tools that make your web site highly 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 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 a similar site built for your business for very little cost?
Is My Website Built Using WordPress? How To Tell
Do you need to know if your website uses WordPress? Maybe you’ve come to our site because you’ve heard or read wonderful things about WordPress, and you’re now wondering if your site runs on the WordPress software, 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 powered WordPress:
Look At Your Page 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 an obvious telltale footprint …
(View your web page source code in the Firefox browser)
Let’s say that you are surfing the web and you visit a 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.
Once the source code of the page loads on your screen, search for “wp-content” either manually …
Or using your browser’s “Find” function …
(Use Firefox’s ‘Find’ function)
This will quickly tell you if the site is powered by WordPress or not.
Note: If you do not locate “wp-content” within the page source code, it does not mean that this is not a WordPress site.
There are other ways to tell if a site was built using WordPress, as we will soon discuss.
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 web site is powered by WordPress other than scanning the source code.
Just Ask Your Website Developer
While this may seem like the most logical thing to do, many web developers, for whatever reason, will build their clients a website and not tell them it’s been built with WordPress.
If you paid a website developer or got somebody else to build your website, just ask your developer or whoever built your web site if your web site runs on WordPress.
That was easy, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t get in touch with the person who built your site, or what if you’ve come across a website that you really like while browsing online and you need to know if it was built with WordPress?
Powered By WordPress
If the site uses a WordPress theme where the web theme templates have not been edited, you will typically see a “Powered by WordPress” message shown at the bottom of the site …
(Powered by WordPress – footer)
If the simple methods above haven’t helped you, here are some other ways of identifying WordPress sites …
Online Tools That Can Tell You If A Website Has Been Built With WordPress
Here are a some online applications that will tell you if a particular website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
Is It WP – WordPress Website Checking Tool
(Is It WP – WordPress Checker)
Is It WP is a free tool that can check if a site uses WordPress or not.
Using this site is very simple. Just type in or paste in the address of the website into the URL field and click the button.
The tool will then search through the URL and tell you if the site was built using WordPress, and if so, which version of WordPress the site is currently using …
If the web site was not built using WordPress, you will get a message similar to 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.com)
If you use either the Firefox or Chrome browser and would like to be able to see if the sites that you are visiting were built using WordPress, then Wappalyzer is a great extension to install on your browser.
Wappalyzer identifies what type of software is installed on 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 web browser add-on.
Once you have installed Wappalyzer, icons will display in your browser menu, next to the site URL identifying which technologies are being used by the sites you visit …
If you see the WordPress icon displayed on the browser menu (as the above screen shot shows), then the site has been built with WordPress.
(A WordPress site!)
Visit the Wappalyzer add-on site 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 you have found this tutorial useful.
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