How To Identify a WordPress Theme
Say you stumble upon a WordPress blog that has a gorgeous design. Amazed, you wonder what theme they’re using. Of course, it would be straightforward to just email the blog’s author and ask, but it might take a few hours (or days) until they get back to you. Here are three simple ways to identify a WP theme in less than five minutes.
1. Check the page footer.
This is usually the quickest way to identify a theme. Just scroll down to the end of the page and look for “Theme X designed by Y” or something similar. Most free WordPress themes include the name of the theme and/or a link to the author’s site in the footer section.
2. Examine theme-related URLs in the source code.
If you can find no mention of the blog’s theme on the page itself, it’s time to examine the source code. Go to View -> Source and press Ctrl+F to open the “Find” dialog. Enter /wp-content/themes/ to locate any theme-related URLs in the HTML. Often you will be able to guess the theme’s name from a stylesheet or image URL.
For example, an URL like this indicates the blog is using a theme called “My Cool Design” :
http://example.com/wp-content/themes/my_cool_design/style.css
3. View theme headers.
There’s one last thing you can try “on the spot” : theme headers. All WordPress themes must include a style.css file that contains a special header comment. This header lists details like the theme name, homepage, author’s name, etc. style.css is simply a normal CSS file, so this information is plainly visible to anyone who bothers to look – just find the URL pointing to style.css in the source code and open it in your browser.
If that didn’t work…
In that case, chances are the site in question is using a custom theme. Also, the blogger might be a bit paranoid about security (not that it’s a bad thing) 🙂
Related posts :
Subscribe via RSS
Get Updates by Email
[…] You Spot a WordPress Blog? In “How To Identify a WordPress Theme,” W-Shadow gives you a list of things to investigate to determine whether or not that cool […]
Ahh, I remember the first blog I ever created. I wrote a story just like this. Smart minds must think alike!
omg! i don’t know how.. will someone tell me how to get this page added in my ipod so my brother can take a look at it?
WordPress all the way from blogs, they are so easy to setup and maintain, also there is a plugin for anything, just search with “keyword” AND “wordpress plugin” to find what you want
Thanks for sharing, es ist großartig!
handy tips, but i couldn’t identify the theme
Does anyone know how to identify the main page or home page for a wordpress website looking through an FTP login? I have to add a few lines of code to the home page and cannot seem to locate the file name for the home page to edit it. Somebody please help!
Thank you!
@Robert
Locate the theme your using under /wp-content/themes/ and you can edit anything the footer, header, body all the files to edit are right in there.
peace !
Well, it looks like I did find a paranoid developer because I can’t figure out what theme they are using at all.
Both the folder name and css file properties were edited, the site gives no sign of anything I can identify either and I’m not sure but I may have to actually hire someone to code the theme for me.
Not cool but oh well!
Sergio
Thank you for shedding some light on a mystery I’ve been facing for a long time! At least one of your suggestions work on almost every WP site I’ve tried to identify.
Sergio, I’ve found when there is no way to identify the theme it is usually because the developer designed it him/herself. You can easily design and create your own fully-functional themes either by using tools like SiteGrinder WP Express plugin for Photoshop, or sending Photoshop files to a service that will turn your designs into a theme. The costs vary and can be as low as $300.00.
Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I’ve truly loved surfing around your blog posts. In any case I’ll
be subscribing for your rss feed and I’m hoping you write once more very soon!