WordPress Plugin Detectors in 2022: How to Find Plugins Used by a Site?

You’re on a lazy Tuesday afternoon, doing some research to solve a problem you have for yourself, or researching your competitors, you happen to stumble upon a website that takes your focus. It may also be the case that smooth animation is coming up at the next step, or that a special subscription form may be appearing right after your blog post.

Here you can find anything that you are interested in and that might appeal to your taste and needs.

During that exact moment, you might be wondering: “what kind of plugin did they use here?”, and this is something you’ve most likely asked yourself at least once in your life. We’re curious animals, after all. So you want to detect the WordPress plugin as well as the WordPress theme they are using.

Today it’s time to get an answer here finally, it’s about time: how do you find out what WordPress plugins a target website is using? If it has plugins, how do you find out what they do?

 

What Is a WordPress Plugin?

There are numerous WordPress plugins that can be added to your WordPress website that can increase its functionality. Similar to the apps you have on your phone.

A WordPress plugin is a program that “plugs into” your WordPress site, and can provide extra function that are not WordPress built in. For example, you could have SEO, cache, email, gallery, ecommerce plugins, and so many more.

The WordPress.org plugin directory has more than 59,000 free plugins available at the present time. Thousands more are available from third-party websites like Github.

Also, there are thousands of premium WordPress plugins, either made by individual developers or by companies.

In the early days, WordPress was simply a tool that would help you to create your own blog. In the years since its creation, it has become a powerful CMS and application framework, largely due to plugins.

 

What Plugin Does This Site Use? Why You Might Want to Know?

Whenever you come across another WordPress site, it’s natural to notice the design and functionality. Sometimes, you may come across a particular feature that you would like to replicate or incorporate into your own website design.

In those situations, it’s helpful to be able to quickly identify WordPress plugins – rather than trying to play a guessing game. By doing this, you can identify the specific plugin quickly.so that you can determine which one you can use into your website to obtain the desired effect.

Prior to attempting to establish which plugins are being used by other WordPress sites, there are a few items to consider. To begin, plugins do not provide all of the functionality that is required. So if you want the plugin to provide you with the functionality you need then you should develop a custom made plugin from the scratch, for that you need to hire a plugin development company who will help you in

Not all plugins are identifiable using automated methods, which is another disadvantage of employing them. The process of validating a website’s code can be slowed down if the code has been minified. Additionally, in order to be recognized by the detector, the plugin must be registered with the detector’s database.

Having said that, if you want to find out which plugins are being used on a website, plugin detectors are a fantastic place to start your investigation. In addition, you can manually scan a website for plugins if it has them.

 

View Source Code

Whenever you’re reviewing the source code of a website, the first thing you should do is view its raw source code. To do this, right click on any website then select “Inspect”, both in Firefox and Chrome.

Now, simply run a search inside the source code of the website using Ctrl-F and look for the following line: wp-content/plugins/.

Here’s what we found on the KPIs Studio website:

They are using the W3 total cache plugin. That’s a good one 🙂

Also, there’s another one that caught my eye. See that green comment? It refers to Rank Math. It’s one of the best WordPress SEO plugins out there. Nice find.

Plugins will use this path to store their files with WordPress, and you will see an entry in the plugins table that includes both that path and the name of the plugin. It’s usually a link to a file that’s part of a script that activates the plugin, and you will be able to detect active WordPress plugins used by the website.

 

Contacting the Webmaster

If you think that the site owner will be responsive to contact, it could be a means of last resort, but it is also a possibility. This means, for example, that the people who run these sites may not be able to answer your question about themes or plugins. A small business owner, however, is likely to be able to respond fairly quickly.

If you wish to contact the developers about what plugins you use, you simply need to send them a nice message. There are some webmasters who are willing to answer such questions. If the rest of the group is not convinced by your idea, then you should be prepared with a story explaining why you want to know. As soon as I say this, they probably won’t help you much if you are planning to replicate their site. Copying is a concern webmasters have, from themes and branding to blog posts themselves.

 

WordPress Detectors to Use in 2022

1. Built With

BuildWith is arguably one of the most useful resources you can access for researching websites and discovering more about them. Upon entering a URL in the box, the program will display not only the template and plugins that were used on the website, but it will also display information about the webserver, email service provider, payment provider, frameworks, JavaScript libraries, and CSS media queries used on the site.

Here’s an example using the kubiobuilder.com website:

Price:
Basic Plan: $295/month
Pro Plan: $495/month
Team Plan: $995/month

There are also yearly plans.

 

2. WP Detector

With the WordPress Plugin Detector, you are able to scan any website and find out which WordPress Theme, Plugins and Hosting they use.

Just paste the URL of the page which you like from the browser and paste it in the WP detector search bar. WP Detector tries to detect all themes and plugins used in any WordPress website. However, some websites may be heavily configured and in such cases, only a few might be detected. They also have a Chrome extension for this.

Price: Free

 

3. IsItWP

IsItWP help you understand which websites are built with WordPress. It provides information about their hosting, WordPress theme, WordPress plugins & more. Just paste a URL and wait for the results.

Let’s test it on the colibriwp.com website.

Well, not accurate. The theme isn’t custom made, the the used is Colibri WP. The thing is that you could use several tools like this for more accurate info.

Price: Free

 

4. ScanWP

ScanWp is excellent and simple to use for discovering themes and plugins. It is one of the best WordPress theme detectors as well as WordPress Plugin detector. As far as reliability and accuracy are concerned, ScanWP has significantly more accuracy and dependable capabilities than IsItWP. They also have more themes in their database. It has significantly improved the accuracy of your result and the information you receive as a result. Another advantage of scanning with ScanWP compared IsItWP is that it also detects more plugins.

You will receive the following information once you enter the detection information, which includes: description, price, URL, and author. There is also information about hosting and pricing available. In addition to learning more about each plugin by clicking on the Google Search button, you will be taken directly to the plugin’s information page.

Furthermore, one of the most significant advantages of using the chrome extension is that it does not require one to visit the ScanWP website every time a theme is found. It is a fantastic plugin, however, It is recommended that you ignore the advertisements displayed on the page.

 

5. Wappalyzer

Using Wappalyzer is great when you want to find out about the framework or platform of a webpage, and it is much more convenient than having to open yet another window just to find out.

It is also necessary that you install the Wappalyzer extension on your browser. Currently, you can use it for both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

Price: Starting $149 / mo.

 

6. What WP Theme is that

This tool provides you with a quick way to determine what WordPress theme and plugins are used by a particular website.

To begin, you’ll notice theme specifics such as the theme’s name, homepage, author, author homepage, description, license, and version. You’ll also see the theme’s license information.

Following that, you’ll be presented with a list of the WordPress plugins that have been discovered. On each plugin page, you’ll find a picture of the website, the name of the plugin, some basic information about the plugin, and a link to more detailed information about each plugin.

The website’s user interface is quite simple to navigate. You will not find any advertisements, links to other postings reviewing themes or plugins, or anything else. With a clean, uncomplicated design, you obtain only the information you require.

 

How to Tell if a Site was made with WordPress?

1. Powered by WordPress Credits in Footer

The simplest way to find out if it’s a WordPress website or not is by checking its footer.

Every website that is made with the help of WordPress tends to keep the WordPress credits in the footer by default. So, if “Powered by WordPress” is written in Footer then it is obvious that it runs on WordPress.

However, all the WordPress websites that are made with the help of WordPress will not have a “Powered by WordPress” in the footer. Site owners can easily remove it from their website so that people won’t directly know that it was made by WordPress. Instead, website owners tend to replace it by keeping their brand credit in the footer.

2. Manual theme and plugin detection.

You can determine this for yourself by inspecting the source code of a page (remember, CTRL + U).

To function properly, each WordPress theme requires two files: index.php and style.css. The style.css file will display the theme’s name.

3. Using a WordPress theme detector.

When you use a WordPress theme detector, you can enter any URL and it will tell you which WordPress theme is now active on that page. WordPress theme detectors are available for free as extensions or websites. Most of the tools previously mentioned can help you with this.

 Wordpress Theme Detector Tool

This Free WordPress theme detector tool helps you see what WordPress theme a website uses, the Author name, Theme Description, and Theme Version. Just place the website URL. Within a few seconds, it gives you all the information about the WordPress theme that the website is using. This tool will also help you to find whether the website is made with wordpress or not.

 

Wrapping it up

If you are a newcomer to WordPress and have no idea what themes and plugins are available on the market, or which plugins can accomplish exactly what you require, detecting WordPress themes and plugins can be really valuable.

Even if you currently have a blog, you will never be able to be familiar with all of the themes and plugins accessible because new ones are released on a daily basis, so keep up with the latest developments. Having this tool in your arsenal will prove to be extremely valuable, especially if you are a designer who is continuously on the search for new ideas.

Now, if you liked this article, and you want to learn more about how to design a WordPress website, make sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel and follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

 

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