Is it possible to tell if a website is built on WordPress? If so, how can you tell if a website is built on WordPress? This article will show you 9 different ways to figure out if a website is built using WordPress or something else. While some of these methods are a bit more advanced and will give you more in-depth information about the website, most of them are really easy to use and can be tried by you right away. Let’s get started!
1. View the Page Source
The title is pretty explanatory. But if you ever wondered if a website is built using WordPress, all you have to do is right-click anywhere on the website and click on “View page source” (or do Ctrl+U on your keyboard).
This method works most of the time, but sometimes you might find yourself on a website that tries to hide what content management system (CMS) they’re using. If that’s the case, you might want to try another method to tell if they’re using WordPress for their website.
To figure out if a website is built on WordPress using the page source, follow these steps:
- Right-click anywhere on the website
- Click on “View page source”
- Press Ctrl + F (or F3) on your keyboard
- Type in wp-content
If the website is built on WordPress you will find URLs containing “wp-content”, the word “WordPress”, the name of the WordPress theme they’re using, and the word “plugin” throughout the page source.
This is the easiest method to tell if a website is built with WordPress, however, if the website owner tries to hide what CMS they’re using on their website, you might need to try one of the following methods to tell if they built their website using WordPress or not.
2. Take a look at the footer
The second method is to take a look at the footer of the website. If there’s a thoughtful person behind a WordPress website, you won’t find this. But you can check if their footer has the “Proudly powered by WordPress” text, or something similar. You might also find some other text that might link to a WordPress theme or WordPress hosting provider, which means using they are WordPress for their website.
This is something you mostly only will find on WordPress websites made by beginners since most experienced website developers will remove it from their website.
3. Add /wp-admin to the URL
By default, all WordPress websites will have a wp-admin page for owners to log in to the WordPress dashboard.
So, you can try to add the wp-admin path after the website’s homepage URL to see if you land on the WordPress login page for admin. For example, if you wanted to see if our website is built using WordPress, you could go to https://silentwp.com/wp-admin
If you land on a login page like this, you’re probably on a WordPress website.
4. Add /license.txt to the URL
Sometimes, people change /wp-admin to something else to prevent hackers from logging in on their websites so you might land on a 404 page when trying to go there. However, just like the wp-admin, you can try to add “/license.txt” after their URL. This will let you view a text file for copyright and general public license.
Most importantly, if it’s a WordPress website, you will see the text “WordPress – Web publishing software” in there. If you wanted to see if our website is built using WordPress, you would go to https://silentwp.com/license.txt.
5. Add /readme.html to the URL
Another easy way to tell if a website is built using WordPress is by adding /readme.html to their URL. If the website is not built using WordPress, you will get a 404 error page.
However, if the website is built using WordPress, you will a page like this that shows basic information to the website owner. Most of the time website owners will delete it but some websites might still have it.
6. Use the Wappalyzer extension
If you want a more convenient way of knowing if a website is built using WordPress or not, you can download a browser extension called Wappalyzer that shows you if the website is built on WordPress in one click.
All you have to do is install the extension here, and you can click on it when you visit a website to see if the website is built using WordPress. You will also see a lot of other information related to the website like:
- CMS
- Programming language
- Databases
- Page Builder
- Caching
- Javascript frameworks
- Tag managers
You can follow these steps to install Wappalyzer:
- Go to the Wappalyzer on the Chrome Web Store
- Add the extension to your browser
- Click on the extension icon to find it
- Navigate to any website
- Open the extension to see if the website is using WordPress
Note that it won’t always show what the website was built on if it’s something too advanced.
7. Use the Library Sniffer extension
If Wappalyzer doesn’t work for you or if you’d like to use an alternative for another reason, you can try the Sniffer Extension. Just like Wappalyzer, it’s an extension that you can add to your browser and see if someone’s using WordPress on their website.
The main difference between Wappalyzer and the Chrome Sniffer Extension is that the Chrome Sniffer Extension will automatically show you what the website is built on in the URL bar. For example, if a website you visit is built using WordPress, you will see the WordPress logo next to the URL when visiting the website.
You can follow these steps to use Library Sniffer:
- Go to Library Sniffer on the Chrome Web Store
- Add the extension to your browser
- Click on the extension icon to find it
- Navigate to any website
- You should see if the website is built using WordPress in the search bar
8. Check the website on BuiltWith
If you don’t like the idea of using a browser extension to check if a website is built using WordPress, you can actually use an online tool called BuiltWith without having to download anything.
Simply go to BuiltWith, paste the URL of a website you want to check, and it will tell you how it’s built. Whether it’s with WordPress or with another CMS.
Note that sometimes BuiltWith won’t be able to tell you how the website is built.
What’s great about BuiltWith is that it won’t only show you what CMS the website is using, but also more in-depth information including:
- Analytics and tracking
- Widgets
- Frameworks
- Mobile
- CDN
- CMS
- Advertising
- SSL Certificates
- Web Hosting Providers
- Name Server
9. Check the website on IsItWP
Another online tool you can use to check whether or not a website is built using WordPress is IsItWP. Just like BuiltWith, you can simply paste in the URL on the search bar and it’ll tell you if the website is built using WordPress or not.
Unlike BuiltWith however, IsItWP is not as accurate in determining what a website is built on. I tried searching the same WordPress website on both IsItWP and BuiltWith. While BuiltWith accurately showed that the website was using WordPress, IsItWP did not.
You will also get a lot less information on IsItWP compared to BuiltWith.
Conclusion
Now you know the 9 best ways of determining if a website is built using WordPress or not. If you simply want to satisfy your curiosity to find out if a website is built on WordPress or not, we recommend using BuiltWith since it’s easy to use and accurate.
However, if you need to check websites regularly for other purposes, we recommend using a browser extension like Wappalyzer which is faster to use than BuiltWith.
If you want to learn more about WordPress, you can check out our other WordPress Guides and Tutorials!
