Best WordPress Theme Detectors plus Plugins- BuiltWith to WhatTheme
Why Use a Theme Detector
Ever see a website whose design you love. Wouldn’t it be nice to know what WordPress theme they are using? Are competitors’ offers converting better, maybe their theme has a better layout for your target audience?
Developing your own theme from scratch but like some features of a few themes? There are lots of reasons to see what theme another website is using. I am often just curious as much as anything. And of course I don’t have access to a competitor’s WordPress dashboard!
This is what a WordPress theme detector will uncover for you. There are also tools that will analyze a WordPress website and tell you what WordPress plugins are in use. They will work with all of the themes out there premium themes or a free theme.
This is a separate exercise form finding the fastest or best WordPress theme. They are not going to detect theme features. But it can help you see what WordPress theme your competition is using.
Detecting WordPress themes being used on a WP site, or better still themes and plugins, can be a real time saver and also some good intelligence .
Let’s take a look …
Top WordPressTheme Detectors
We looked at all of the sites that had a WordPress theme detector tool and those that found WordPress plugins and came up with our list of ten detectors. They generally come in two forms.
The first set are online applications. A software as a service (SaaS) offering. These WordPress theme detectors are typically free but a few have some premium features you can subscribe to.
The second type of theme detectors are browser extensions. Just turn them on in your browser and visit the site in question. Click on the icon in your extension bar and voila – theme and CMS info.
The final area we looked at was CMS detector. Sometimes we get so involved with WordPress we forget there are many other CMS options. Not all sites are WordPress websites. If your target site does not have any WordPress information available try these tools to check for other CMS platforms. If you still have no results, a completely custom theme or flat html site is likely.
Online Detectors
The online WordPress theme detectors all generally operate the same way. Put in the domain name of a WordPress website you are curious about and the tool will go off and retrieve the site information and try to de-code what theme a site is using. Some variables include: does it recognize child themes, does it get the plugins being used. If a child theme does it report the parent theme.
WPThemeDetector
wp Theme Detector is a web-based WordPress theme detector and plugin detector. It works exclusively with WordPress websites and WordPress themes. It provides some additional information including beyond the WordPress theme name.
- The theme’s description
- tag
- license
- statistics about the provider
- additional information about the site you searched for
- child theme
What Theme
WhatTheme claims to be the most advanced CMS and theme detection tool. It is more than just a theme detector. It is a free online tool. It is one of the more popular WordPress theme detectors.
They work with more than just WordPress themes and can detect many CMS frameworks including WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Shopify, Ghost, Blogger, Tumblr, Big Cartel, Magento.
For a WordPress site it shows theme details including:
- Theme URL
- Author – Theme developer
- Version
- License
- Tags
- Description
What WordPress Theme Is That
Another WordPress theme detector it will scan a WordPress site and report the site’s theme. It works with both parent and child themes.
It is only a WordPress theme detector with no plugin or information about other content management systems. It reports:
- Theme provider
- Name of the theme
- Main Theme
- Plugins