Anyone can become a web developer today. This was greatly facilitated by the development and distribution of turnkey information solutions called concert management systems, or CMS sites.
What is a CMS?
The content management system is a ready-made set of files and folders necessary for the site to work. The basic set realizes all the potential necessary for a start. After the deployment of the content management system, for example, on a local hosting, the developer can implement additional modules and plugins, thereby expanding the capabilities of the future site. He can change the look, add a variety of counters, forums and other additional features. After the site is published on the network, that is, it starts hosting on the server, the developer or users can add various content directly from the content management system itself. Depending on the CMS site, there are various ways to do this. For example, Joomla has a convenient built-in editor with which you can generate almost any kind of data. This allows you to create content without knowledge of programming languages such as HTML, PHP, JavaScript.
Why do you need to define a CMS?
There are several requirements for determining the type and version of a content management system. Here is a short list:
- to determine the potential vulnerability of your site;
- to implement a similar site;
- when removing traces of the presence of a content management system;
- to carry out hacker attacks.
In most cases, site owners try to hide the use of CMS. This guarantees the security of your portal or service, as many vulnerabilities and methods of their use can be easily found on the Internet.
How to determine the site CMS?
If the developer who created the site using content management systems wants to support the company that owns this system, then on any page of the site you can almost always find copyright with a logo. If the CMS could not be determined with the naked eye, then you will have to delve into the code or use third-party services. This will be described in more detail below.
Learning code
The simplest thing that comes to mind when defining a content management system is to look into the meta tags called "generator". In its attribute "content" the version of the desired system will be indicated. Also, certain CMS leave their characteristic traces when generating pages. For example, Joomla always appends a domain name to its style files. And Drupal adds the word "files" to the paths. Bitrix sins the same way, only it substitutes the value of "bitrix".
Robots.txt file
This text file is an instruction for search engines, with which you can prevent them from visiting certain pages of the site. In order to determine CMS using a robots file, you will first need to examine the file and folder storage structures of most well-known content management systems, and then open it and see how the directories look. For example, for WordPress, using the directory with the wp prefix is relevant. Knowing the location of folders in other content management systems, you can determine which one is used on this site.
References
To determine the CMS of a particular site, just look at the link that appears in the address bar. The Drupal content management system is characterized by the use of a question mark and the “q” symbol immediately after the first slash in the address. Joomla, on the other hand, forms the string in such a way that index.php and a set of additional parameters are always present in it, so that the string in it looks rather cumbersome.
Admin
You can determine on which CMS the site is made, go to the admin panel. For a WordPress content management system, the address wp-admin or wp-login is usually relevant. Drupal uses just the word "user". Joomla uses the administrator prefix.
In fact, this method cannot guarantee a 100% definition of the CMS content management system, since many developers, after moving all the files to the ultimate hosting, try to hide the admin address from outsiders.
Online Services
You can determine CMS online by going to any of the many services presented on the Internet. It is enough to indicate the website address and after a while the system will automatically check for the presence of characteristic parameters and properties for a specific content management system and give the result. If the CMS was securely hidden or a self-written version was used, then the service will report that no traces of the presence of the content management system were found. Here is a short list of similar services.
iTrack
The service interface is very simple and straightforward. The main page immediately prompts you to enter the address of the investigated site. The service database contains about 50 well-known content management systems. After a short scan, he will notify that he was able to detect. If nothing was found, the service will offer a special study by specialists, which will give the most complete picture.
2ip
Also a fairly simple service designed to facilitate the definition of a content management system. It’s enough to drive the domain address into the line and click “Start”. The peculiarity of this service is that it displays the results immediately, one after another, showing the location of a particular CMS. In addition to this task, the service offers many other solutions, such as determining the hosting, determining IP-addresses, frequency of visits and many other useful information.
Majento.ru
This service can scan several sites at once, up to 10 pieces, and determines the presence of a content management system pretty quickly. In addition, it offers many different functions and features additionally. In particular, you can conduct a detailed analysis of the site, its relevance, generate a site map, find subdomains, find out about the statistics of visits and a lot of other useful information.
In addition to services, various plug-ins for browsers that perform a similar function will help determine which content management system is used on the site. For example, Wappalyzer for Chrome. You can determine which CMS is installed on the site with just one button. Additionally, the plugin will show in which programming language this is done, all used javaScript frameworks, as well as what types of analytics the site is connected to.
Conclusion
Naturally, an experienced web developer will sometimes be able to determine the absence of any content management system just by looking at the site, because for each type of CMS there are a large number of plug-ins and modules specific to a particular system. In any case, it is recommended that you always hide the traces of the presence of a content management system. In particular, the entrance to the administrative panel. This will help protect against unauthorized access or hacking the site.