When the “blogging revolution” first began, blogs looked like blogs and websites looked like websites. One could easily tell blogs and websites apart.
Then WordPress came along and changed all this. Now, it’s getting more and 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 surface.
(Can You Tell Which Application Is Powering Your Website?)
For many website owners, understanding the difference between a Content Management System application like WordPress and other website-building software is huge, not so much in terms of the technical differences, but more importantly, regarding the things 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 the following 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 much cheaper cost than the cost of getting site ”A” built.
If you picked website ”B” above, then you need to learn more about WordPress, why WordPress can be used to create an eye-catching website that will normally turn out to be far less expensive to build than websites built using traditional website editing applications … and how to tell these apart!
WordPress is the world’s preferred online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a powerful CMS that is ideally suited for businesses on a budget.
Whether your reason for having a digital presence is for personal blogging or business use, WordPress is easy enough for a newbie with no programming skills to use, yet it offers many helpful add-ons that make your web presence extremely effective when it comes to getting your content published and indexed by search engines, promoting visitor interaction, 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 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 to a smaller budget if required?
Is My Web Site WordPress?
Do you need to know if a website uses WordPress? Maybe you’ve come here because you’ve read wonderful things about 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 a number of ways to tell if a site has been built with WordPress:
Look At 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 a telltale footprint …
(How to view page source code using the Firefox web browser)
Suppose that you are surfing the web and you visit a site that you like, and you would like to know if the site uses WordPress …
First, bring up the site’s source code on your screen, using the methods described above.
After the source code of the page loads on your screen, you can search for words like “wp-content” either by scanning the code …
Or using your browser’s “Find” function …
(Use the Firefox browser ‘Find’ function)
This will tell you if the site is powered by WordPress or not.
Note: If you cannot find “wp-content” in the page 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 WordPress, as we will soon discuss.
As the point of this post is to help non-technical users, however, we have listed below a number of easier methods you can use to check if your website is powered by WordPress other than looking at the source code.
Simply Ask Your Website Developer
While this may seem like the logical thing to do, many web development agencies, for whatever reason, may build clients a website and not tell them it’s been built with WordPress.
If you have an existing web site and you’re not sure what application was used to build it, just ask your webmaster or whoever built your web site if your site runs on WordPress.
That was easy, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t reach your website developer, or what if you’ve come across a site that you really like while surfing online and need to know if the site was built with WordPress?
Check Below The Footer
If the site uses a WordPress theme where the web templates have not been customized, you can typically find a “Proudly powered by WordPress” notice shown at the bottom of the site …
(Proudly Powered by WordPress – site footer section)
If the simple methods above aren’t helpful to you, here are some other ways of telling whether a site uses WordPress or not …
Sites That Tell You If A Website Is Built With WordPress
Here are a couple of sites that can tell you if your website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
IsItWP.com
(IsItWP.com – WordPress Site Checker)
IsItWP.com is a free online tool that can check if a site was built with WordPress or not.
Using this tool is super simple. Just enter the address of the website into the search field and click the button next to it.
It will go and search through the URL files and tell you if the site was built using WordPress, and if so, which version of WordPress it is currently using …
If the site is not a WP-powered site, 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.com
(Wappalyzer – Browser Extension (Firefox / Chrome))
If you browse the net using either the Firefox or Chrome web browsers and would like to be able to see if the sites that you are visiting are WordPress sites, then Wappalyzer is a great add-on to install on your browser.
Wappalyzer tells you what type of 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.”
It’s also easy to install.
After installing Wappalyzer on your web browser, icons will show up in your browser, in the URL field allowing you to see which technologies are being used by all the sites you are visiting …
If the WordPress icon displays on your browser menu (as the above screenshot shows), then the site uses WordPress.
(This website is powered by WordPress!)
Go here to install the Wappalyzer browser add-on:
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 this the information in this tutorial useful.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum