Have you ever come across a cool looking website and wondered how it was built?
Maybe you’re in the process of designing or revamping your own content, portfolio or eCommerce website and you’re looking for fresh ideas and inspiration? Or you’re a web designer and your client points out a feature or design element they like on a website they’ve seen?
So how do you find out what platform a website is built on, for example WordPress or Shopify, or the website’s theme, technology, plugins, apps and other elements the website uses?
You could manually inspect the code of a website or install a browser extension. Or you could simply just go to a website and enter a website’s address or URL and find out easily that way.
We’ve looked at a number of website platform and technology detection tools and like the following two websites for the level of detail they provide for free, and how the information is clearly and nicely presented.
The two websites are:
1. Built With — Detects a Website’s Platform, Plugins and Other Technologies
You can simply type in the website’s URL into the search box on the Built With’s home page and then you’ll be taken to the ‘Technology Profile’ page. You can then see if the site uses WordPress, Ghost or another CMS platform under the Content Management System section. If the website uses an e-commerce platform such as Shopify or WooCommerce then it’ll appear under the Ecommerce section.
The technologies used are categorised under the following headings if applicable:
- Analytics and Tracking
- Widgets
- Ecommerce
- Frameworks
- Content Delivery Network
- Mobile
- Payment
- Audio / Video Media
- Content Management System
- JavaScript Libraries and Functions
- Advertising
- Shipping Providers
- Verified Link
- Email Hosting Providers
- Web Hosting Providers
- Name Server
- Robots.txt
- SSL Certificates
- Web Servers
- Operating Systems and Servers
- Content Delivery Network
- Web Master Registration
- Copyright
You can also set up a free account to get 10 Detailed Lookups a Day which lists even more technologies that were used on the website, as well as when the tech was first detected and last detected. Logging in will also enable you to see the Meta Data Profile information of a website. This page brings back the Company Name, Address and Contact Details, as well as the Publicly Listed Contacts of the Company and Website Information. Other information you can access are the website’s Relationship Profile, Redirect Profile and Company Profile.
2. What WordPress Theme Is That
According to W3Techs, WordPress is used by 65.2% of all websites that use a known content management system (CMS). This represents 43.1% of all websites (since some sites may be built with just static pages for example).
So, if you know the website was built using the WordPress CMS platform, then you can go to What WordPress Theme Is That website and type in the Website URL or domain and find out what theme (including parent and child themes) and also which WordPress plugins the website uses.
The WordPress theme details it will bring back are as follows:
- Theme name
- Theme homepage
- Author
- Author homepage
- Description
- Version
- License
- Theme screenshot
- List of Detected WordPress plugins
You can also see a list of the Top 10 Most Popular WordPress Theme Providers and the Top 50 Most Popular WordPress Plugins.
So next time you want to find out what platform a website is built on, or what theme, plugins and other technology a website has used, go to Builtwith and What WordPress Theme Is That for more detailed information.