Have you ever stumbled across a website that you think looks really good, and wish that you could use the same thing for your own? You might have even gone onto third-party forums trying to get answers for the name of a theme that you really like on someone else’s website.
The great news is that it’s free and easy to check the website’s theme. In this article, we will talk about how you can find which WordPress theme a website is using.
When you are developing your website, one of the biggest decisions that you will make is what theme to use. You might not realize it, but there’s a lot to think about when choosing the perfect WordPress theme for your website.
If you come across a website with features and a theme that you really like, then this could be a great way to shortcut the process, so that you can get the perfect look you’ve always wanted.
Some websites have custom themes, and in this case, you won’t be able to use their theme for your own website. However, there are a lot of websites out there that are making the most of one of the many free WordPress themes.
You can definitely find out the name of the theme and then purchase it yourself. Let’s take a look at three different methods for figuring out a website’s theme.
Use the WordPress Theme Detector Feature
We think that one of the easiest ways to find out a website’s theme is to use the WordPress theme detector tool. The best part is that it is completely free to use. All you will need to do is enter the website URL and then choose ‘analyze website’.
The WordPress theme detector will look through the website source code so that you can see the name of the WordPress theme that they’re using. However, if the theme is not super popular, or it is custom, then this tool will show you the name without a screenshot of the details.
If this is the case, then all you have to do is copy and paste the theme name into a Google search, so that you can find the link to download it. However, if it is a custom theme, then you will not be able to find it.
There is a chance that it might be custom, but then there is also a chance that it is going to be one of the thousands of free themes that WordPress offers its users.
Use IsItWP to Work Out the Website’s WordPress Theme
Another super easy way to find the WordPress theme of a website is to use IsItWP, which is a website theme detector. It is a free online tool that can help you work out plugins and themes that are being used by a WordPress website.
All you have to do is open up their dashboard and enter the website URL for the website that you want to check.
First check that the website is using WordPress. If this is the case, then they will be able to detect the WordPress theme and show you the results.
It can go a step further to and try to work out the WordPress hosting provider as well as any plugins they might be using.
Occasionally, you will see a result like this for the web sites theme:
Again, just like the WordPress theme detector, this third-party tool might not be able to give you exact details if the theme is custom.
However, it is going to be able to display the name of the theme, which means that you can search for it online and see if you can download or buy it anywhere.
Manually Detect the WordPress Theme
Sometimes, a website owner will change the name of their WordPress theme. In this case, tools like the ones we have talked about above are going to be pretty useless. However, you will still be able to identify the websites code to find out which theme they are using.
Every WordPress theme has a style.css file. This file comes with the theme header which describes the name of the theme, the version it is using, and theme author. In order to find this file, visit the website that you want to identify.
Right click anywhere on the home page and choose ‘view page source’ from the menu you see.
This is going to open the source code of the page that you are on. Now you will need to find a line in the source code that looks like this:
You can click on the URL that you see in this code to open the style.css file. A lot of the time, there will be more than one file like this located in the page source. If this is the case, then you will need to find the one that is associated with ‘/wp-content/themes’.
At the beginning of the style.css file, you will see that it includes all the necessary information about the theme. It should resemble something like this:
You should be able to find the theme’s URL here, which is going to take you to the theme that is being used by the site.
Identifying the Parent Theme
A lot of WordPress sites out there use child themes to customize their pages. If this is the case, then the same header will contain information about the parent theme being used.
As you can see from the example in the screenshot above, you’ve got an additional ‘template’ parameter, and this is what is called the parent theme. You can also look at the site’s source code for the parent theme.