Today anyone can become a web developer. This was largely facilitated by the development and distribution of ready-made information solutions, which are called concert management systems, or website CMS.
What is a CMS?
A content management system is a ready-made set of files and folders necessary for the site to work. The base set implements all the potential you need to get started. After deploying the content management system, for example, on local hosting, the developer can implement additional modules and plug-ins, thereby expanding the capabilities of the future site. It can change the appearance, 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 of the site, there are various ways to do this. For example, Joomla has a handy built-in editor with which you can generate almost any kind of data. This allows you to create content without knowing languages.programming such as HTML, PHP, JavaScript.
Why define a CMS?
There are several needs for determining the type and version of the 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;
- for hacker attacks.
In most cases, site owners try to hide the use of CMS. This guarantees the security of your portal or service, since many vulnerabilities and techniques for exploiting them can be easily found on the Internet.
How to determine the site's CMS?
If a developer who created a site using content management systems wishes to support the company that owns this system, then on any page of the site you can almost always find a copyright with a logo. If it was not possible to determine the CMS with the naked eye, then you will have to delve into the code or use third-party services. This will be discussed in more detail below.
Learning code
The easiest thing that comes to mind when defining a content management system is to look into the meta tags called "generator". In its "content" attribute, the version of the system you are looking for will be indicated. Also, certain CMS leave traces characteristic of them when generating pages. For example, Joomla always appends todomain name to your style files. And Drupal adds the word "files" to the paths. Bitrix sins with the same, only it substitutes the value "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 identify a CMS using a robots file, you will first have to examine the file and folder storage structures of most known content management systems, and then open it and see what the directories look like. For example, for WordPress, it is relevant to use a directory with the prefix wp. Knowing the location of folders in other content management systems, you can determine which one is used on a given site.
Links
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 character "q" immediately after the first slash in the address. Joomla, on the other hand, forms the string in such a way that it always contains index.php and a set of additional parameters, so the string in it looks rather cumbersome.
Admin panel
To determine which CMS the site is made on, go to the admin panel. For a WordPress content management system, the wp-admin or wp-login address is usually relevant. Drupal just uses the word "user". Joomla uses the prefix administrator.
In fact, this method cannot guarantee a 100% determination of the CMS content management system, since many developers, after moving all the files to the final hosting, try to hide the admin address from strangers.
Online services
You can identify CMS online by going to any of the many services available on the Internet. It is enough to specify the site address and after some time the system will automatically check for the presence of characteristic parameters and properties for a particular content management system and return 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 small list of such services.
iTrack
The service interface is very simple and clear. The main page immediately prompts you to enter the address of the site under study. The service database contains about 50 well-known content management systems. After a short scan, he will notify you of what he has found. If nothing was found, the service will offer to conduct a special study by specialists, which will give the most complete picture.
2ip
Also a fairly simple service designed to make it easier to define a content management system. It is enough to drive in 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 serviceoffers many other solutions, such as determining hosting, determining IP addresses, frequency of visits and many other useful information.
Majento.ru
This service can crawl several sites at once, up to 10 sites, and determines the presence of a content management system quite quickly. On top of that, it offers many different functions and options additionally. In particular, you can conduct a detailed analysis of the site, its relevance, generate a sitemap, find subdomains, learn about visitor statistics and much other useful information.
In addition to services, a variety of browser plugins 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 what programming language this was done in, all the javaScript frameworks used, 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 plugins and modules specific to a particular system. In any case, it is recommended to always hide 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.website.
