How can I check if my website is a template website?

Like with cars you have to see ‘what's under the hood’ to tell if a website is a template or not - it all depends on the underlying framework of the website, e.g. what platform is the website based on and what mark-up is used for the site development. However undeniably the most common template websites are WordPress sites. Other platforms commonly used for template websites include Drupal and Joomla, though template websites could be duplicated from anything.

How can I check this myself?

There are a number of ways you can check if your website is a template or not. Start off by checking if there are any hyperlinks in the footer of your website. These text links are sometimes forgotten to be removed and will often state something along the lines of ‘theme by …' or ‘template by …’, if you see one of these links it will likely take you directly to the place the template was purchased from. Similarly if your website is a subscription based site there will be a link to the company located in the footer, or included as a part of your web address.

If you don’t see either of these details the next place to search is 'under the hood'. You do this by getting into the source code. Start with the front-end. Right click your browser web page and click "View page source" (or similar).

Look at the CSS file directory names. Search for "/wp-content/themes/" for example, see what the preceding theme name is, then search for that name in your preferred search engine e.g. Google.

Look at the graphics or image names and search for these.

Look at meta and image alt tags and search these.

Do a reverse image search to see if any images are associated from an original template. Stock images are common and are not to be mistaken for template sites on their own; you just want to see if they're associated with any websites selling the original template.

This is beyond my technical expertise or time

Not a problem, that's what we're for. Get in touch with us and let us know what you'd like to know about your website.

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