Theme choice is essential for a website’s usability and extensibility. A WordPress website’s theme can determine the overall look and feel of the site and how easily you can add new content.
Changing themes once a site is live can have negative repercussions, such as losing brand recognition or broken content.
In addition, it can be helpful to identify the theme behind a website to replicate it. Sometimes you may come across a website with a design or layout that you like, and you may want to use the same theme for your own website.
Identifying a website’s theme can help make this possible.
There are several tools available to help you detect which theme a WordPress website is using.
How to check if it’s a WordPress website
WordPress is a content management system that helps you create a website or blog from scratch or improve an existing website’s design.
WordPress themes and plugins make a consistent format for posts and pages on a website. While many different themes and plugins are available, they all follow the same basic principles.
WordPress evolved dramatically over the years, but there are still page templates and post templates that help differentiate between other designs. This makes it relatively easy to determine if the owner created a website with WordPress.
Footer and source code
When you are looking to determine if a website is built on WordPress, you should first look in the footer. If you don’t see any mention of WordPress there, and if you’re feeling adventurous, you can try checking the source code yourself.
Open the page’s source code (CTRL + U) in your browser. Specifically, check for mentions of “wp-content” using the search function (CTLR + F). This is one of the giveaways that a site is running on WordPress.
Check manually for themes and plugins used on a site
You may determine this for yourself by inspecting the source code of a site (again, CTRL + U).
To function correctly, each WordPress theme requires two files: index.php and style.css. The style.css file should display the theme’s name.
Perform a search for “wp-content/plugins” to learn about the installed plugins on a WordPress site. You may do a fast Google search for the name you discovered and follow the connection from there.
Use a specialized tool
A WordPress theme detector is a free plugin or website that allows you to enter any URL and determine the WordPress theme currently active on the page.
If you’re not sure where to get the detection tool you’re looking for, we’ve included a list below of our top WordPress theme detectors.
Best WordPress theme detectors in 2022
Theme detectors are tools that help you identify the platform and name of a WordPress website’s theme. While they are valuable for this purpose, they should not be relied on as the only source of information. Many factors create a website’s look and feel, and these detectors may not always be accurate.
That said, here’s our list of best WordPress theme detectors in 2022.
WPSniffer
WPSniffer is a Google Chrome extension that shows you the active WordPress theme used on a website. This is a straightforward and handy tool for developers and designers that regularly work with WordPress.
Price: Free
What WordPress Theme Is That?
What WordPress Theme Is That? is more complex than the remainder of this list’s items. Not only can you search for a specific theme, but this website also includes a list of the most prominent WordPress theme and plugin vendors, allowing you to browse through their catalogs.
This utility takes you straight to the WordPress plugin repository, where you may easily download plugins for your own site.
Price: Free
Built With
Built With is one of the most informative methods for discovering information about websites. Entering a URL will display the template and plugins used on the website and the server, email providers, payment services, frameworks, JavaScript libraries, and CSS media queries.
Price: Individual use is free; the Basic Plan is $295 per month; the Pro Plan is $495 per month, and the Team Plan is $995 per month.
Wappalyzer
Wappalyzer is ideal for performing brief research on the framework or platform of a webpage and is far handier than launching another browser tab to do so.
Additionally, you must install the Wappalyzer plugin in your browser, and it is compatible between both Google Chrome and Firefox.
Price: Free
WhatCMS
WhatCMS can tell you the content management system (CMS) that a website uses, for example WordPress.
If you want to take things to another level, you can browse the Tech Reports page to learn about the current market share of a top-level domain name or even a language market share.
Price: Free
WordPress Theme Detector
The WordPress Theme Detector displays the theme’s name and the theme’s official website, its license, authors, and version. Additionally, it shows which plugins the site utilizes.
Price: Free
W3Techs
W3Techs provides a “Technology Score” based on the popularity (number of sites that use the same technology) and traffic (amount of traffic received by other sites that use the same technologies) of all the technologies used on the site. The phrase “technology” refers to content management systems, social media widgets, and web servers, among other things.
Additionally, this tool informs you regarding the actual CMS market overall.
Price: Free
Kinsta
The free WordPress Theme Detector from Kinsta enables you to rapidly discover essential data about the theme used on every WordPress website, including the theme’s title and version number, the theme’s URL, and the WordPress version being used to run it.
Price: Free
Conclusion
It’s difficult to recommend just one tool. Using simply one of these tools will yield unsatisfactory results; thus, I advocate utilizing a mix of these resources. All of these will assist you in determining the information you require.
If the list above is missing your favorite site that detects a website’s theme, or plugin, let me know in the comments below, and I’ll add it to the list after testing it out!
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