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 changed all this. Now, it’s getting more difficult to tell the difference between blogs and websites. 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 Your Website Is Powered By?)
For website owners, understanding the difference between a CMS application 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 matter to most website owners, such as web development costs, ease of use, ability to maintain the site up-to-date, managing content, etc.
Think about this …
Which of the following 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 much cheaper price than the cost of getting site “A” above.
If you decided to go with website ”B” above, then you need to know more about WordPress, why WordPress can give you an eye-catching website that will probably turn out to be much less expensive to build than websites built using a website development application … and how to tell these apart!
WordPress is the world’s most popular online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a budget-friendly CMS platform that is ideally suited for local businesses.
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 HTML to use and manage, yet it offers many helpful functions that make your website extremely 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 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, your site is also driven by the WP CMS.
And if you don’t have a website yet, or are considering getting one 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 a much smaller cost?
Is It A WP Site?
Do you need to know if a website uses WordPress? Maybe you’ve come to this page because you’ve heard or read about WordPress, and you’re now wondering if your site runs on the WordPress software, or some other content management system.
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 ways to tell if sites are running on WordPress:
Search The Page Source Code
If you know how to view 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 telltale footprints …
(Viewing your page source code using Firefox)
Let’s say that you are browsing online and you visit a web site that you like, and you wonder if the site uses WordPress …
First, bring up the site’s source code on your screen, using the methods described above.
In the source code, you can 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 find “wp-content” in 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 tell if the site was built using WordPress, as we will soon see.
As the point of this article is to try and help non-technical users, however, we have listed below a number of easy ways to check if your site is built using WordPress other than viewing the source code.
Ask Your Webmaster
While this may seem like the most obvious thing to do, some website development companies, for whatever reason, will build clients a website and not tell them it’s been built with WordPress.
If you hired a website developer or got somebody else to build you a website, just ask your webmaster or whoever built your site if your website runs on WordPress.
That was easy, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t reach the person who built your site, or what if you’ve come across a website that you really like while browsing the net late at night and you really want to know if the site was built using WordPress?
Powered By WordPress
If the site uses a WP theme where the theme templates have not been customized, you can typically see a “Powered by WordPress” message shown at the bottom of the site …
(Proudly Powered by WordPress)
If these simple methods aren’t helpful to you, here are some other ways of identifying WordPress sites …
Tools That Can Tell You If A Website Is Built With WordPress
Here are a couple of sites that can tell you if a particular website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
Is It WP – WordPress Site Checker
(Is It WP – WP Checker)
IsItWP.com is a free online tool that can tell you if a site uses WordPress or not.
Using this site is really easy. Just enter the address of the site into the URL field and click the button next to it.
It will 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 the version of WordPress it is currently using …
If the web site was not built using WordPress, you will get 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 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
(Wappalyzer.com)
If you use either the Firefox or Chrome browser and want to be able to tell if the sites that you are visiting are WP sites, then Wappalyzer is a very useful extension to add to your web browser.
Wappalyzer helps you identify what 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 an easy to install and very easy to use web browser add-on.
Once you have installed Wappalyzer, icons will appear in your web browser identifying which technologies are being used by all the sites you visit …
If the WordPress icon shows up on your browser menu (as shown in the screen shot above), then the site uses WordPress.
(It’s a WordPress site!)
To visit the website, 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:
We hope you have found the above information useful.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)