By boon4376 on

How do you tell if a site is drupal powered?

Since I've started using drupal for web development, I've seen a lot of websites where i say "That looks like drupal" or "that looks like a drupal module"... but idk how to tell.

I have tried "view page source" and searching for the text "drupal" but it usually doesnt appear.

Is that the proper way to tell? or do people usually hide that their site is drupal powered when they launch.

Comments

vm’s picture

vm commented

viewing the source of multiple pages is one method. drupal.js is called in the header. Naming convention of divs once you are familar with drupal and it's contrib modules tend to be dead giveaways.

checking a sites misc folder sometimes works
checking certain paths can lead to clues

There are also sites which can be found with google that the site can be run through that look for commonalities and make guesses based on those commonalities.

Some try to hide what they are using for multiple reasons. Those who understand drupals innards can usually assertain whether drupal is powering the site of not just by looking at the source code.

Drupal can be hacked to the point that it would be made far more difficult if not impossible to recognize however, that would require hacking everything about drupal. every module every line of code would need to be gone over. After this was completed and a drupal update was released. It would have to be done all over again, which typically means they'd never update thus leaving the site in an insecure state. Giant time sink IMHO.

arhak’s picture

arhak commented

http://www.lullabot.com/articles/is-site-running-drupal

WebNewCastle’s picture

WebNewCastle commented

Arhak, very nice! I'm happy to know about this article.

vertazzar’s picture

vertazzar commented

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10229