If you want to detect the plugins installed by a WordPress website, then there are a number of ways to do so. You can analyze the source code or you can use external tools that provide information on the plugins. Not all plugins can be detected. Those that do not impact the user interface are not easily detectable.
Plugins that are only used on the admin side or for administrative purposes are not discoverable. But those plugins that add elements in the main website or add stylesheets to the template are easily detectable.
What WordPress Plugin is a Certain Website Using?
To find it out, use one or a combination of these three methods:
1. View Source
Open up the WordPress site and then view the HTML source for it. You can press CTRL + U shortcut key for it or you could use the menu or right click options to access the source. Once you open the source, search and find:
/wp-content/plugins/
There will be multiple instances of this text in the entire HTML code. What you are looking for is the name of the plugin that comes after this code. You will be able to see directories like
- /jetpack/
- /sp-faq/
- /contact-form-7/
You can google these directories and you’ll find out the name of the plugin in the results. Even the name of the directory gives us a hint of the plugin name. For example: /jetpack/ directory tells us that Jetpack is being used and /contact-form-7/ says that Contact Form 7 is installed. Similarly, when we google sp-faq we get the result SP responsive wp-faq with category plugin on top. It is as simple as that.
2. Inspect Element
On Google Chrome and Firefox, there is a useful feature for developers called Inspect Element.
This feature allows us to right click on an object in the webpage, click on inspect element and then discover the exact HTML code that is displaying the element. We can use it to narrow down the HTML code and then see the id and styles set to it. The ids are set in such a way that they reveal the name of the plugin.
For example:
A website is using a sharing widget that slides on the left side of the page. We right click on it and then click on Inspect Element. Some HTML code is displayed. Scroll around and find the class= or id= tag in the HTML.
For our example, we discover class=”sumome-share-client-show”. Search for sumome-share-client-show in Google and we come up with the result for the Share plugin provided by App Sumo.
3. External Tools
For detecting the plugins, the same tools that I provided before to detect WordPress themes can be used. The websites are:
Input the domain name in any of these two sites. Below the name of the theme, these sites will also provide you with the list of the plugins used by the website.
Once the name of the plugin is detected, you can search for them on Google or the official WordPress plugin directory. You can install them to add the same functionality to your website.