5 Ways to Tell if a Site is Built in WordPress
One of the most common questions we get from WordPress students is,
“How can I tell if a site is built in WordPress?”
It’s not possible to answer this question without knowing a few tips and tricks.
If you look at a website there is no way of telling whether or not it is built in WordPress. The design of a site often gives zero clue about the platform it’s using.
We’re going to give you 5 ways to tell if a site is built in WordPress. Not all of these suggestions will work on all WordPress sites, but taken together they should give you a clear answer.
#1. Check the Site’s Source Code
One of the most reliable ways to show if a site is using WordPress is to check the source code.
In the source code, check to see if important files are being loaded from the /wp-content/ folder. Here you can see Javascript files loading from the /wp-content/ folder:
You can search the source code for the words “WordPress”. In this example is produces the results from the Yoast SEO plugin:
#2. Visit the License.txt File
Some sites may remove this file or block access to it, but if you add license.txt to a site’s URL, you may get the WordPress license file.
For example, you can see this file on the official WordCamp site.
#3. Visit C WordPress URLs
One common identifier of WordPress sites are the URLs for key pages.
The URL /wp-admin/ will normally take you to the admin login page although sites with strong security procedures may hide or block this page.
Other common URLs include:
- wp-login.php
- wp-trackback.php
- feed
#4. Check Websites With Usage Data
There are websites that can try and identify the technology behind websites. Builtwith.com is one of the most popular sites that does this:
It correctly identifies WordPress. as using WordPress (genius, I know!):
#5. Use the Chrome Sniffer Extension
Chrome Sniffer, as the name implies, work with Google Chrome, and is perhaps the quickest and easiest solution on this entire list.
Install Chrome Sniffer and it will appear in your browser bar. As you navigate to different websites, the icon will change to reflect the software being used.
In this example, the Chrome Sniffer logo changes to the WordPress logo:
You have a tiny misspelling in the above link:
[url=http://builtwith.com/]http://builtwith.com/[/url]
Thanks for spotting that, joshuabaer23
Firefox extention Wappalizer gives you a wealth of info on a website, from the hosting platform to the underlying os and, or course the CMS used. Try it on ostraining 🙂
Thanks, Jean-Francois. That actually succeeded in identifying this site correctly where Chrome Sniffer failed.
Wappalyzer is solid!
still works in 2021…. :))))))) kisses from the future!
awesome! I’ve always wanted to know. I’ve used options #3 mostly and option #1 secondary … Now have #5. Although I found what may be even better (for me it certainly is) called: PageXray – it’s an extension for chrome. Thanks!!!!
Thanks Giovanni. That’s another great one for the list.
You could also use Wappalyzer, a Chrome plugin; it also identifies other frameworks and CMS types. It is especially useful if a site uses a combination of tools.
Not sure how it works, but I’m using a Chrome extension called “WordPress Version Check” [url=http://www.whitefirdesign.com/wordpress-version-check]http://www.whitefirdesign.c…[/url] which tells you if the site uses WordPress and if so what version. It is also available for FireFox.
Thanks Charlie
Hitting that site led to me discover a plugin they made which seems very useful: [url=http://wordpress.org/plugins/no-longer-in-directory/]http://wordpress.org/plugin…[/url]
Interesting plugin. I wonder how often it does a check and if it creates any significated performance hit. Guess it depends on how many plugins it has to check. So how do you tell when it is no longer in the directory. 😉
Good question, but it seems a ripe choice for a tutorial this week.
Nice article – We use both Wappalizer in Firefox and Snifer in Chrome. Some sites seem to hide their WP status more that others as some sites register with different results.
The builtwith site does a very good job when you want to know the engine used.
How many developers try and hide the engine? We remove as much as possible of the WP details on client sites to cut down on hacking attempts.
What do you use to hide the WP details on client sites? Is it a plugin? Thanks!
You can use [url=http://similartech.com]http://similartech.com[/url] for knowing if a website is using WordPress or any other Framework.
Great post! I
am looking forward to read your blog.
Have you considered just using [url=http://scanwp.net]http://scanwp.net[/url] instead?
Great tips. Thanks
I personnaly use this Chrome extension (which also gives you the version of WordPress). I guess it checks the HTML like you described.
[url=https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wordpress-version-check/llmhiappiocnpcmnigpbgbgjmpddknma]https://chrome.google.com/w…[/url]
Just curious Steve, any of these reveal the theme WordPress was built with? Thanks!
these urls are for wordpress theme detection [url=http://whatwpthemeisthat.com/]whatwpthemeisthat.com/[/url] and [url=http://www.wpthemedetector.com/]www.wpthemedetector.com/[/url]
Hey Thanks a Lot Buddy !!
great.
thank you
I always check with source code when i see word (wp-content) or there is somewhere written wordpress. Thanks for great informative post.
nice post great
what if my site is build by wordpress, but i don’t want to use [url=http://site.com/wp-admin]site.com/wp-admin[/url] to login?
Try a plugin like this [url=https://wordpress.org/plugins/protect-wp-admin/]https://wordpress.org/plugi…[/url]
thanks
Thanks in favor of sharing such a nice opinion, piece of writing
is nice, thts why i have read it entirely.
Great source, great help, and great thanks to Steve.
We’re glad to help, Amir!
Very helpful. Thank you Sir!
This was an awesome piece of information!!
Ok. This is great. I have been developing a website using HTML from scratch, and when I come across another website that has very impressive layout, I tend to get somewhat insecure. At least the tips (especially the first one) will let me feel that the page or site I am building is not as easy as it is when built using WordPress.
Hey, James.
Nice to hear you found this tutorial helpful. Mind you, we have even more such useful tips and how-tos in our Video and Book Clubs.
Happy Friday and all the best for your projects.
Alex
Or try this: yoursite.com/readme.html and should give you the version of WordPress
Is there any way to hide your WordPress version from this buildwith website or any other CMS recognizer website?
I downloaded the Library Sniffer extension on Chrome, but I noticed that when I visit some webpages, the only info it provides is that the website uses Google Analytics. How can I tell what software a website uses when that’s the case? Google Analytics isn’t quite the equivalent of WordPress when it comes to creating a website, unless there’s something I missed.
[b]Good Answer. Thanks for the team.[/b]
It’s really worth of it, I have added the chrome extension it easily shows that which software tools helped in building the particular sites
Keep posting the worth articles
Great tips. Thanks
great info, thanks!!!!
Awesome, Thank a lot
Thank you these 5 tips were really handy and helpful to me 🙂
Thanks for sharing this post with us. This is a great list and I have started following many of these list.
I think the admin of this website is actually working hard in support of his website, since here every material is quality based information.Please keep up with the good work, i will be visiting this site more frequently as most of the content are really informative.
Hi! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I genuinely enjoy reading your blog posts. Can you recommend any other blogs that go over the same topics? Thanks a ton!
Monica, our blogs are broken into categories in the right-hand column to make it easy to find posts with similar topics. Also, feel free to click on the magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner and search for a specific topic there. Thanks so much for visiting OSTraining. We hope you find the answers you need.
thank you very much for this information. I appreciate your work.
great stuff
Helpful, thank you
exellent
i tried using the first way you gave to know a WordPress website, and I found out that this site is one….am I right?
Odu: OSTraining is a Joomla site – not a WordPress site.
My wesbsite is too slow please help me
Nice I – is help full
you can use a tool called siterecipe.com it has also browser extesion over chrome,firefox and Edge browsers
for chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/siterecipe/mincmlimlnngndejpmiapoeefiicnlbi
for Firefox:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/siterecipe/
for Edge: https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/mdcmlabnaibijekhmhbjkabamdahbgnb
Very helpful.