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Do you ever come across websites with designs that make you think: “Dang, if only my site could look this good!” Well, with WordPress, since many sites use off-the-shelf themes, it’s often worth checking which theme a site is using, just in case it’s one that’s available for all to use! But how? How can you tell which theme a website you stumble across on the internet is actually using? Let’s take a look…
Note: don’t worry, it’s actually pretty easy and doesn’t require any technical skills.
How To Tell Which Theme A WordPress Website Is Using – Step-by-Step:
– (note: video credits to Topher DeRosia – creator of HeroPress)
Video Transcript:
Hi! This is Topher, with WinningWP. In this video, we’re going to take a look at how to tell which WordPress theme a website is using. The first test is really easy. Often it’s written right on the page. On this page, if you go to the footer, it says Build with Make, Your friendly WordPress page builder theme. You can click on Make and it goes to the website where that theme can be purchased. Another option is to use whatwpthemeisthat.com. You simply put in the website address and search. It brings up the theme home page, the author home page, and the theme screenshot. It also shows what plugins the site is using. Now if you search for a site that is not WordPress, it’ll let you know that that site is not using WordPress. But what if this site fails you? What if it says WordPress detected, but the specific theme details could not be determined? It’s probably using a customized or proprietary theme. Well let me show you how to figure that out. In almost every browser, you can right click, and go to View Page Source. And the thing you want to search for in here is style.css. And we’re looking for one associated with a theme. We found three. The first one is in a plugins folder so we know that’s not it. The second one is in a themes folder so let’s click it. And right at the top here, it says the theme name is Make. And the theme URI is here. That’s the theme’s web address. And the author’s address is here. So I’m going to copy that real quick and bring up a new tab and go there. And there we are, the website for this theme. Now if there’s more than one theme listed, the second one is usually a child theme. And here we can see that this is a Child of Make. Almost never will you want somebody’s child theme. What you want is the parent theme which in this case was Make. Let’s go to tinkeringmonkey.com. I’m going to right click. View page source. And search for style.css. And there’s one in a plugins folder. But here’s one in a theme’s folder. Now it says that this is a Child Theme for the Ken Theme. However, the original theme address is right here and this is the theme that was originally used. So as you can see, there are a variety of ways to find the theme. Let’s review real quick. First, look right on the page, probably in the footer. It might simply say what the theme is. Then check whatwpthemeisthat.com. If it’s not a WordPress setting at all, it’ll tell you. And if it is WordPress, it’ll usually tell you what theme is being used. Failing that, you can go to the page, right click, choose View Source, find style.css and click it. It should tell you the theme information right in the header. Included in that information is a link to the theme itself. Then you can go find that theme and either download or buy it. If you’d like to learn more about WordPress, check out WinningWP.com.
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