How to Find Which WordPress Theme a Site is Using
March 1. 2021
There are many decisions you have to make when creating a WordPress website. And choosing the appropriate theme is one of the vital decisions. Besides the appearance, depending on the quality of the theme, it can also affect your website performance. To choose the right theme, you have several options. You can search for one in large theme markets. Or, you can check what themes other WordPress websites are using. For this, it will be necessary to know how to find which WordPress theme a site is using, because sometimes it’s not so obvious.
Methods to discover which WordPress theme a site is using
In simple words, themes are blank, pre-built websites. You can use their design and structure, fill it with your content, and have your own instant website. Of course, you will have to configure your theme properly and maintain your WordPress website regularly. But, if you want a complete, ready-to-use, well-designed, and functional website, WordPress themes are a good starting point.
However, it’s not always easy to find a suitable WordPress theme. Often time, when some websites grab your attention, you want to know what theme they are using. If you are lucky enough, you can read the theme and theme’s author name just below the footer. But in most cases, that information is not there. Fortunately, there are freely available resources to help you discover what WordPress theme a site is using. So let’s see a few methods that can help you find this information and use it for your own website.
Find WordPress theme with online tools
When you want to choose the WordPress theme, the fastest way to discover which theme a website is using will be with online tools. You can simply enter the website’s URL address and they will display the desired information.
Gochyu Theme Detector
The Gochyu is one of the most popular theme detectors you can find. One of its best features is that it can detect themes used by various platforms, not only WordPress. It detects website theme used on:
- WordPress.com
- WordPress.org
- Drupal
- Joomla!
- Squarespace
- Shopify
- Prestashop
Besides finding the themes, it will also show you plugins used on those websites. On top of it, Gochyu can show you what CMS, builder, and framework so you know how the website is created.
WordPress Theme Detector
This is a great tool to find numerous details about what theme and plugins the website is currently using. It will analyze the website, and if it’s a WordPress website, it’ll show you a lot of useful information. The only downside is that it won’t detect custom themes. And if a website is using some less popular theme, you may only get its name, not all the other info. But, even the name is sometimes useful since you can always search Google for its origin.
IsItWP
Another easy-to-use theme and plugin detector is the IsItWP. First, it will find out if the website is based on WordPress before it tries to detect its theme. Besides the theme information and a small thumbnail, you can also find out plugins, and even what hosting provider the website is using. On the other side, if the theme is a custom or a child theme, you won’t get all the details, but you may still get the name.
WhatWPThemeIsThat
This tool supports all WordPress versions from 2.x and up. If you need to easily find what WordPress theme a site is currently using, all you need is a URL. Just like other tools on the list, it will show you the theme (both parent and child themes) and plugins. In addition, you can see the 10 most popular WordPress theme providers list. And, the list of the 50 most popular WordPress plugins. This tool will also show you if a website is using Joomla or Drupal.
ScanWP
ScanWP is also among the most popular tools that can detect almost any WordPress theme and plugin. What makes it different from other tools is that it shows a tremendous amount of information about a website you are scanning. Including:
- WordPress theme name with price, tags, and link
- Percentage of theme usage
- Each plugin with its price and link
- Percentage of plugin usage
- and more
You can also see their version of the top 50 scanned themes and plugins, top page builders, and best WordPress hosting providers.
Use browser extensions to detect the WordPress theme a site is using
Another way to discover the best plugins and themes, those beautiful websites you come along are using, is with browser extensions.
For Google Chrome, all you need to do is to go to their web store. Type something like “detect themes” in a search, and filter out the results with the Extensions checkbox. This way, you will find some of the best extensions to detect WordPress themes and other useful information. In general, the group of best extensions includes names like:
- Gochyu – Theme Detector
- WordPress Theme and Plugins Detector
- Scan WP – Detect WordPress Themes and Plugins
- WPSNIFFER – WordPress Themes Sniffer
Manually find a WordPress theme in the code
In addition, you can also manually search for a WordPress theme in the website code. Maybe some of the tools will not be able to detect the theme, but you want to check if the information is available anyway. For this, you can do it in two ways:
- with View page source (Ctrl+U)
- and with Inspect (Ctrl+Shift+I)
In essence, you need to go to the desired website page. Right-click on empty space without elements, and select one of the options above. Or you can use shortcuts on your keyboard. View page source will take you to the source code of the page. There, you have to find a link to a stylesheet file for wp-content that will look something like this:
<link rel=’stylesheet’ id=’themename_style-css’ href=’http://example.com/wp-content/themes/theme-name/style.css’ />
When you open the stylesheet, on top of the page you might find information like:
- Theme Name: name
- Theme URI: https://webtestexample.com
- Author: name
- Author URI: https://authortestexample.com
- and other information.
If you are familiar with or prefer to use Chrome DevTools, you can use Right click>Inspect. Basically, you want to find the same stylesheet as in the previous method.
In the end, besides the cases where websites are using custom themes, you should be able to get results. Generally speaking, if the website is using one of the popular themes, all these methods will allow you to easily find which WordPress theme a site is using. And once you have its name, there will be no obstacles to download or buy the theme for your own website.