How do you determine what technology a website is built on? [closed]

Answer 1

You could use http://builtwith.com to figure out which server and programming language was used. For example it told me that SO uses IIS7, google analytics, html4 and utf8.

If you want to know the framework...well that will probably not be possible just from looking at the site. Why don't you write them an email? ;)

Answer 2

There are all sorts of things you can look out for, but it doesn't really give you any certainty as to the technology behind a site. In general, information like that is something people will want to hide, as the more information that is exposed the easier it might be for malicious parties to identify security vulnerabilities or denial of service holes.

If I was interested I'd probably look, in no particular order, at:

• urls, and file extensions.
• HTTP response headers
• Source code for comments, or standard JS libraries

Incidentally, the tools mentioned in other answers are only looking at some of the above properties of the site for you, albeit automatically, and slightly quicker. :)

Answer 3

You could use http://builtbased.com/ to figure out which server, framework and programming language was used.

Answer 4

URLs can give a lot of clues, especially with Content Management Systems.

For example "http://abcxyz.com/node/46" looks a lot like Drupal.

Also many frameworks have standard JavaScript and CSS files they use.

Answer 5

Go to Netcraft and use the "What's that site running?" search box in the top left corner. Click here for the report on Stack Overflow. It won't necessarily be correct (e.g., there could be caching or load balancing in the way), but it often gives you the clue you need.

Answer 6

http://www.similartech.com is a new tool we made, that does just that and presents it very nicely.