How to determine which sites are powered by which CMS?

Straight off the bat, you should know that finding out what content management system is being used for a website is very difficult. It is supposed to be, as finding out what type of content management system is being used is part of hacking a website. This article gives you tips on how you may find out which content management system is being used, but the fact is that it is difficult, so do not expect any easy answers.

Here are some easy answers

Let’s jump straight in with a few statistics from website checking tools. These tools will look at a website and tell you what CMS it thinks that they are using. The accuracy of these tools is unknown, but they have published data on how good they are at detecting which CMS is being used. Take these numbers with a pinch of salt, as the 27% one may be more accurate, whereas the 73% one may take more guesses.

W3Techs is found at w3techs.com/sites and is able to identify the content management system 73% of the time.

BuiltWith is found at builtwith.com and is able to identify the content management system 64% of the time.

Wappalyzer is a Firefox add-on and is able to identify the content management system 36% of the time.

CMS Detector is found at detectcms.com and is able to identify the content management system 27% of the time.

CMSeye is found at cms.targetinfolabs.com and is able to identify the content management system 27% of the time.

Signs that the site is run by a content management system

The first thing you may want to consider is the fact that the website may not be run by a CMS. The numbers published on the tools listed above may be because the tools are effectively figuring out which websites are run by a CMS. The numbers may also be the way that they are because the websites they are looking at are not created by a CMS. Let’s not forget that a website may be designed by a human with programming skills.

Look for if the website has a border on the left and right that is not being used. This is a common sign of a CMS website. The left and right furthest edges will have little in them, or just adverts in them. This may also present as a column going down the middle with the text and images in.

The menu running along the top with text links is another common CMS signal. There are other websites that may use this technique, but it is pretty standard for a CMS program. Otherwise, just have a look at a few websites and get a feel for what a CMS website and a manually written website looks like. You will soon get the hang of what is and what isn’t.

One out of every six websites is powered by WordPress

This is why so many hackers have created tools to hack into WordPress websites. There are so many of them about that you could always take a chance and simply guess that the website is run by WordPress. There is literally a one in six chance that you are correct.

W3Techs

This is the one that scored 73% on how good it is at figuring out the content management system used. Do not forget that this is only telling you that it came up with a result, instead of an “unknown” reply as a result. Still, if it is true then it is the best performing CMS detector on the market.

BuiltWith

This is a tool that also gives you lots of other information about the website such as its SEO status and the things it has written on its Meta tags. There is a free version you can try first.

Wappalyzer

This is a browser add on that you can use to see what CMS is being used on a website. It can also tell you things such as the ecommerce and message board systems being used.

CMS Detector

It will tell you what CMS has been used (in its opinion), and will also tell you information about the coding language, web server and the website framework too.

CMSeye

This is a good detector if you want to see which free CMS programs are being used. It is not known for being able to pick out the paid CMS programs, but these days the paid ones are not very popular so it is not a big problem.

Kate Funk is a freelance writer at http://getanycontent.com. She is mainly focusing on technology, gadgets and all the latest trends which are interesting for networking enthusiasts.

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