How to find out on what framework or in which language was the website created?

Question

How can I find out on what framework or in which language was the website created?

For example, if a person sends me a link to his own website that he has created and he claims that this website was build with (For example) Ruby on Rails (or CodeIgniter (or whatever)), how can I be sure, that he truly used this framework or language to create this website?

Why am I asking... On websites like Elance clients ask freelancers to show them the examples of their previous projects. So, if I am a client, how can I be sure, that this person sends me the project, that is created in the language and framework I need? Because he can have (for example) a lot of CodeIgniter projects, but he will tell me that those are created via Rails to get hired.

It can be his own server, with a free domain name and free hosting, (I don't care). What I mean is how to know this information I need, not using different internet tools where you can simply put the URL and get the description of the website. Because he can have his own server, with a free domain name and free hosting... So his website would not be listed there.

You can't determine in what framework a website is built in from just having the URL. — Daan, Jul 30 '15 at 08:56
No there aren't any tools for this, you'll need to have the source code to make sure. — Daan, Jul 30 '15 at 08:59

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 30 '15 at 09:05

What I mean is how to know this information I need

You don't need that information.

Why not just trust them to tell the truth? Either they can deliver with a certain framework or they cannot. If you do small iterations, you will see the results early. So if they cannot deliver with the framework you are asking for, you'll find out soon enough to cancel the contract.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 30 '15 at 09:06

There is no sure-fire way to make this determination, but there are things you can look at that can give you hints.

For instance, you can browse through the site and see what extensions the URLs have. A URL with a filename ending in .php is a good sign that the site was probably written using PHP.

You can also view the page source.. many site frameworks will have comments in them or other identifiers that will give them away. Wordpress, for instance, has dead giveaways in its code that you can view in the browser. Look for comments or file/path names that may identify frameworks being used.

At the end of the day, many of these things can be covered up (file extensions can be hidden and/or modrewrite can be used to clean up URLs, and comments/code can be changed to remove framework identifiers), but these are some possible ways to identify how a site was implemented.

How to find out on what framework or in which language was the website created?

2 Answers2