5 Ways to Tell if a Site is Built in WordPress

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.

Check the WordPress 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:

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:

Search the WordPress code

#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.

License.txt file on a WordPress 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.

wp admin login screen

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:

A domain lookup on Builtwith.com

It correctly identifies WordPress. as using WordPress (genius, I know!):

Built With CMS report

#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:

the Chrome Sniffer extension

Author

  • Steve Burge

    Steve is the founder of OSTraining. Originally from the UK, he now lives in Sarasota in the USA. Steve's work straddles the line between teaching and web development.

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Joshua Baer

You have a tiny misspelling in the above link:

[url=http://builtwith.com/]http://builtwith.com/[/url]

steve

Thanks for spotting that, joshuabaer23

Jean-Francois Bohemier

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 🙂

steve

Thanks, Jean-Francois. That actually succeeded in identifying this site correctly where Chrome Sniffer failed.

XMAN

Wappalyzer is solid!

Mihai

still works in 2021…. :))))))) kisses from the future!

Giovanni

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!!!!

steve

Thanks Giovanni. That’s another great one for the list.

William LaRue

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.

csasser

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.

steve

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]

csasser

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. 😉

steve

Good question, but it seems a ripe choice for a tutorial this week.

Alastair Dodwell

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.

Matt

What do you use to hide the WP details on client sites?  Is it a plugin? Thanks!

Yaniv Hadad

You can use [url=http://similartech.com]http://similartech.com[/url] for knowing if a website is using WordPress or any other Framework.

web design courses

Great post! I

am looking forward to read your blog.

Avi Klein

Have you considered just using [url=http://scanwp.net]http://scanwp.net[/url] instead?

Mauricio Navarro

Great tips. Thanks

Franck

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]

Leslie ONeill

Just curious Steve, any of these reveal the theme WordPress was built with? Thanks!

Roar Khan

these urls are for wordpress theme detection [url=http://whatwpthemeisthat.com/]whatwpthemeisthat.com/[/url] and [url=http://www.wpthemedetector.com/]www.wpthemedetector.com/[/url]

Dinesh Kumar

Hey Thanks a Lot Buddy !!

michael

great.

thank you

MagHow

I always check with source code when i see word (wp-content) or there is somewhere written wordpress. Thanks for great informative post.

ALI HASSAN

nice post great 

sararith

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?

steve

Try a plugin like this [url=https://wordpress.org/plugins/protect-wp-admin/]https://wordpress.org/plugi…[/url]

sararith

thanks

Mukesh kumr

Thanks in favor of sharing such a nice opinion, piece of writing

is nice, thts why i have read it entirely.

Amir B

Great source, great help, and great thanks to Steve.

Nick

We’re glad to help, Amir!

Cool Tony

Very helpful. Thank you Sir!

Sanjay Mohanty

This was an awesome piece of information!!

James T.

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.

alex-smirnov

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

Anonymous

Or try this: yoursite.com/readme.html and should give you the version of WordPress

Javed UR Rehman

Is there any way to hide your WordPress version from this buildwith website or any other CMS recognizer website?

N

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.

Madhav

[b]Good Answer. Thanks for the team.[/b]

Anand

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

Dozer

Great tips. Thanks

anita

great info, thanks!!!!

Danny

Awesome, Thank a lot

dhru123

Thank you these 5 tips were really handy and helpful to me 🙂

emmasophiaseoa6

Thanks for sharing this post with us. This is a great list and I have started following many of these list.

ashleyperryseo

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.

Monica Jain

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!

mikall

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.

Faheem Iqbal

thank you very much for this information. I appreciate your work.

virender rawat

great stuff

Raj

Helpful, thank you

farshid

exellent

ODU EMMANUEL

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?

mikall

Odu: OSTraining is a Joomla site – not a WordPress site.

Cs Riya Khurana

My wesbsite is too slow please help me

dhruv

Nice I – is help full

Messaoud

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

Manisha

Very helpful.

d

Thank you

Last edited 4 months ago by d
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