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How to Tell if a Site Is Using WordPress

How to Tell if a Site Is Using WordPress

To be able to tell if a site is using WordPress, there are a couple of different methods you can employ. In this post, I will discuss 3 such common methods. My advice would be to use all to confirm.

Method 1: Go to The Site’s Page Source

(Screenshot for Visual Reference to Follow After the Bullets)

With this method, after going to any pages’ source code, you can try searching for the following terms:

  • wp-content: Typically tied to where all the assets, images, etc., are stored.
  • wp-includes: ^same.
  • yoast: If a website is using one of the most renowned WP plugins, and have kept all the default settings, you should be able to find hits when searching for “yoast.”
  • generator: Usually associated with indicating what WordPress version a site is using.
searching for wp-includes in the page source code
An example of searching for “wp-includes” in the source code. Similarly, try searching for all the others mentioned above.

If you can get positive hits for all, you can almost say with certainty that the site is using WordPress.

Method 2: Go to https://whatcms.org/ and Plug-In the Site URL

checking if a site is using wordpress with whatcms
As shown, my site is using WordPress.

This one is as easy as it sounds. As demonstrated in the screenshot above, simply go to the mentioned site, input the site you want to check, and the tool will provide results into what software/system/CMS, etc., a site is using. If it’s using WP, it should be able to say so effortlessly.

Note that there are similar sites out there. So if you want a double confirmation on your double confirmation, feel free to leverage others as well.

Method 3: Append /WP-Admin or /wp-login.php to the Site’s Homepage

If a site hasn’t tweaked their default WordPress login page, traditionally, appending either the /wp-admin or /wp-login.php to its homepage will direct you to the login page. If this happens, it’s one more indication that the site is using WordPress.

For example, if abcd.com uses WordPress, navigating to the URL of abcd.com/wp-admin, or abcd.com/wp-login.php should direct you to a login page like the screenshot below.

a typical wp login page
As stated, if a site is using WordPress, and hasn’t changed much of their default settings, appending the URLs to the homepage as advised, should lead you to a login page like this screenshot.

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In Summation

It’s relatively straightforward to tell if a site is using WordPress. Either use the methods described above, which should tell you with great certainty, or confirm with even more upon further research. There might be paid tools out there that might be able to do the same job.

However, if you’re just paying to know what a website is using, you’re probably better off without it, as I am quite confident that similar to how you can find out if a website is on WP, you could for other platforms as well, for free.

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