How to spot a WordPress Template

Jul 22, 2012 articles, wordpress

Was your site built with a WordPress Template?

Finding the right web design company or person is always a tricky endeavor. With so many so called “web designers” it can be tough finding a web design company that truly know what they are doing. If you are getting a custom web design done, it’s sometimes a good idea to look at the source code of your  custom design. There are times when clients do what to use Templates as it can cut down on production cost. But if you are paying for a custom design you don’t want to get a Template thrown at you and not even know you aren’t getting custom work. So a quick tip on how to spot a WordPress Template.

Right click the page, and go to view page source. You can also find it under View drop down.

(File, Edit, View)

Once you pull up the source code you want to find the style sheet for the site.

link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href=

Once you find the style sheet, look for themes, what follows is the theme name. Now if it is a custom design it should be labeled your company name or something similar. If it isn’t you can usually click on the link and it pull up a CSS file that tells you the exact URL of the Template. From there you can copy and paste the URL and see the DEMO template site. Or a quick Google Search, for “Theme” and the name of the “Template” will get you to the Template being used.

You can also use this trick when researching companies to use for your web design needs. Visit some of their “sample” sites and view the source code, see if they do custom design or are using templates in pretty much most if not all their designs.

Now using a Template isn’t a bad thing, if that is the route you want to go, but if someone is using templates they should be upfront about the fact that they are using a template and aren’t charging you for a custom website design.