What WordPress Theme Is That is a free online tool that allows you to quickly discover what WordPress theme a site uses (including parent and child themes). Additionally, it will also detect what WordPress Plugins are in use. Learn how to discover and find what themes and plugins are your competitor’s WordPress site using.
Have you ever stumbled upon a stunning website when browsing the internet, and after you’ve picked your jaw up off the table, thought: What WordPress theme is this website using? Or: Wouldn’t it be great if I could use that design on my site? Well, now you can. Using WhatWPThemeIsThat (a free online service more commonly known as ‘What WordPress Theme Is That?’).
There are plenty of significant WordPress theme marketplaces out there(and, if you’re not sure where to start, hop onto a website such as MOJO or Creative market, and you’ll no doubt find loads of gorgeous designs).
However, nothing beats the thrill of running into the perfect design for a site already out there in the wild, and if you ever find yourself face-to-face with a website design you love, what then? Unfortunately, unlike when browsing a theme store, unless you can read the code behind the site. You have no immediate way of knowing what theme is under use.
In short: What WordPress Theme Is That is a website under design to do exactly what it says on the tin. I.e. detect the WordPress theme that any given website is using.
In this post, I’ll be taking What WordPress Theme is for a spin to show you what it does, how to use it, and, most importantly, whether it really works (and if so, how well?).
Discover What WordPress Theme Is That?
What WordPress Theme Is That is a free theme detection tool present at WhatWPThemeIsThat.com. Developed by Ultimate Marketing Strategies. It was one of the first theme detection tools to market, launched way back in 2011.
Of course, first and foremost, a website has to be running WordPress to have any hope of you detecting its theme — here’s a quick tutorial of ours on how to test whether a website is using WordPress for yourself.
Suppose this first criterion is up. What WordPress Theme Is That can dig into a website’s code to look for tell-tale signs of the site’s theme. Follow this to discover what WordPress plugins and themes some site is using.
In addition to a site’s theme, the tool can also pick up which plugins a website uses. However, this is a far more difficult proposition. It’s unlikely that every plugin will be detected (more on this below).
So far, so good, then. So, you probably now have a good idea of what to expect from the tool. However, there are a few limitations to its detective skills.
For starters, not all WordPress websites will produce results. For security purposes, some websites will actively hide that they’re using WordPress and the theme they’re using.
Secondly, the WordPress website may use a custom theme developed from scratch. (It’s also worth pointing out that if a commercial piece has been appearing. What WordPress Theme Is That won’t pick up on this fact.)
The tool’s attempts to detect plugins will be up if the plugin isn’t active on a particular page. If you’re looking to find out the name of a specific plugin, make sure you find a URL on which you’re sure it’s being under use. Follow this to discover what WordPress plugins and themes some site is using.
Using the site
Access WhatWPThemeIsThat.com, then input the URL you want to check. Remember: Some websites will use different themes on different URLs. So, for example, they may have a different theme for their blog. Similarly, if your focus is on plugins, choose a URL on which you know the functionality is active.
After inputting the URL, hit Search.
If the website you’ve searched for isn’t using WordPress, you’ll see an error message such as this one:
If, however, it is using WordPress, the tool will return as much information as possible. This information is split into two sections: Themes and plugins.
How to Discover What WordPress Themes & Plugins Some Site is Using?
I’ve set up a testing environment specifically with the free Twenty Sixteen theme installed to answer this.
I have also installed eight free plugins that are actively present on the front end of the website. The plugins I’ve selected are:
- Contact Form 7
- WooCommerce
- MailChimp for WordPress
- Soliloquy Lite
- WP Google Maps
- Fancier Author Box
- Easy Pricing Tables by Fatcat Apps
- Related Posts
And, to make things a bit more challenging, I’ve also installed four behind-the-scenes WordPress plugins:
- Yoast SEO
- iThemes Security
- WP Super Cache
- Disable Comments
With that out of the way, let’s see what WordPress Theme Is That got on, shall we?
So How did What WordPress Theme Is That do?
First up, it’s worth noting that it got the theme — Twenty Twenty-Two — spot on. After that, we got Anzu.
Second, it also got a clean sweep on all eight front-end plugins installed and activated on the site. That means that if you fall in love with a specific design element on a website — say, an opt-in form — you could hit up What WordPress Theme Is That, and you have a good chance of finding the plugin responsible for it.
The plugin did slightly less impressively for the ‘hidden’ plugins. The tool only flagged the WP Super Cache of the four plugins installed. This was to be expected, though, as these plugins are far more challenging to pick up. So, while the tool was super helpful at detecting a website’s front-end plugin makeup, it was less effective at uncovering the infrastructure at the back end.
Overall, I was certainly impressed with how the site performed. I was expecting it to get the theme correct, but I thought it to be far more hit-or-miss at detecting plugins. This (admittedly, one-off) test was 100% accurate with the plugins it noticed.
Of course, this doesn’t mean the results will be as accurate every time, and we’ve already outlined some of the tool’s limitations. Some WordPress site owners may obscure their WordPress usage, use custom themes, or take security measures to mask their theme.
And again, this one is more difficult to call when it comes to detecting plugins. From the results of this test, we can conclude that any plugins actively deployed on the front end are likely to be seen. However, just because a plugin isn’t detected doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t being used, so be sure to take the results with a pinch of salt.
Conclusion: Discover What WordPress Themes & Plugins Some Site is Using
All in all, WhatWPThemeIsThat discover performs pretty well (albeit with a few limitations). It’s free to use, takes no more than a couple of seconds to run, and the results are relatively accurate.
Overall, I’m a big fan of What WordPress Theme Is That, and I’ll be sure to deploy it again the next time I encounter a website with a must-have design!
