How can I find out with which software a web page was written?

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I'd like to know which software was used for the development of the web page from hotel.info. How can I do it? Is there any tool for Firefox that could help me finding out this information?

waszkiewicz

Posted 2010-07-13T16:09:57.273

Reputation: 421

Answers

5

hotel.info is probably written using Visual Studio, considering that it is built on ASP.NET, based on the fact that its URLs end with .aspx. There is a whole lot of scattered JS and custom-written HTML, though.

And a reply to BloodPhilia's answer: hotel.info contains the following <meta> tags:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en" />
<meta http-equiv="content-style-type" content="text/css" />
<meta name="description" content="You can use hotel.info to obtain even better hotel prices, around the world. Whether you want a spa hotel, a boutique hotel, a conference hotel or 5 star luxury, searching for hotels with the hotel.info hotel reservation service is simplicity itself. A total of 1,000,000 real hotel reviews supplied by guests will help you select the best accommodation option for your next business trip, city break, short break or conference." />
<meta name="keywords" content="Hotel, search, book, reserve, Reservation, Hotels, Room, hotel.info" />
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp,noydir" />
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE-7" />
<meta name="verify-v1" content=""/>

Hello71

Posted 2010-07-13T16:09:57.273

Reputation: 7 636

Thanks for the info. I'll try to sneak in the IT and ask them as soon as I have time. But you've been really helpful. – waszkiewicz – 2010-07-13T16:25:01.187

13

This question came up on Stack Overflow a while back.

From that link, there is a tool called BuiltWith that determines many of the platforms/libraries the site is built on.

theycallmemorty

Posted 2010-07-13T16:09:57.273

Reputation: 380

Thanks. You're right, it's actually more a Stack Overflow question... – waszkiewicz – 2010-07-13T16:44:26.083

1Meh... I'd say it fits well into the grey area between the two. :) – theycallmemorty – 2010-07-13T16:51:56.767

Note: BuiltWith only allows 5 free lookups a day, and isn't open source. – starbeamrainbowlabs – 2019-02-17T12:40:25.257

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If you're talking about what server-side software was used to build the site, there's no definitive way to determine that; you really just have a few hints to go by. Here are a few:

  1. Comments and meta tags might suggest something like "page generated by FrontPage", etc.

  2. Some sites have their assets (CSS, JavaScript) references appended with long numbers like style.css?3893877834. This is common with Rails-developed sites, but others use that technique too.

  3. The URL gives hints, like if you see .jsp, .php, .asp, aspx, .py (Python), .pl (Perl), etc., those are pretty dead giveaway as to the server-side language that was used. If you see .do in the URL or .action, it's probably Struts.

  4. You can use sites like Netcraft to determine what web server (apache, nginx, IIS) is being used

yalestar

Posted 2010-07-13T16:09:57.273

Reputation: 813

Thank you for the good and precious tips. That will help me to my general question, for the future. Thank you. – waszkiewicz – 2010-07-13T16:25:49.390

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Usually, in the source of the website, it's mentioned as a "Generator" meta-tag.

Wordpress for example, adds this to the source:

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress.com" />

Frontpage uses:

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">

BloodPhilia

Posted 2010-07-13T16:09:57.273

Reputation: 27 374

Hi! Thanks for your answer. I tried to look in the Source Code, but I cannot find anything. Maybe something I don't know... – waszkiewicz – 2010-07-13T16:15:20.897

1@waszkiewicz - If it's not in there, as with hotel.info, you can be assured it's custom built and therefore doesn't necessarily use third party software. By links you can deduct it uses aspx technology anyway. – BloodPhilia – 2010-07-13T16:15:40.023

Ok, thank you. That's actually possible. I work for them, but I couldn't find the info. Thanks again. – waszkiewicz – 2010-07-13T16:17:17.163

0

This hasn't been mentioned yet. Google Chrome has a plugin called Chrome Sniffer, you can use this to determine most if not all of the used JavaScript libraries and web frameworks. Unfortunately I do not know any equivalent of it in Firefox.

Also, as yalestar has mentioned, it can be very tricky to determine what has been used on the server side; since server side code could just send you plain HTML and JavaScript.

Dkyc

Posted 2010-07-13T16:09:57.273

Reputation: 41

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There is a Firefox Add-on called Wappalyzer can determine most of the platforms.

Annon

Posted 2010-07-13T16:09:57.273

Reputation: 11