Is there an easy way to tell if a site is running expression engine?

Question

I have tried looking for

• Common paths for template files
• Admin pages
• Meta tags

Seems to be really easy for drupal/wordpress/textpattern - are there any quick tricks for ee?

Answer 1

I use the "BuiltWith Technology Profiler" that I have installed on Google Chrome. Not fool proof but I use it all the time to see what has been used to build sites (not just ExpressionEngine).

Get it here

Answer 2

I've found the easiest (and best) way to determine if a website is running ExpressionEngine is to inspect the cookies set by the site.

By default, an out-of-the-box ExpressionEngine installation names its cookies with the prefix exp_:

Naturally, these Cookie Settings (Cookie Domain, Cookie Path and Cookie Prefix) can be overridden in the Control Panel, but many people never bother to change it from the default.

If they have, the prefix will be different but the rest of the cookie name will be unchanged.

For example, compare the following two cookies:

exp_last_visit        // Default EE Website
cms__last_visit       // Website for CampaignMonitor

You'll notice both cookies have in common last_visit (and so on for all cookie names).

You can test out this newfound knowledge on these popular, high-traffic ExpressionEngine:

• A List Apart
• CampaignMonitor
• iLounge
• Obama-Biden Change.gov

While there isn't a reliable way to determine what CMS a site may be running, trying to guess the system folder path, asset names, common paths and templates is time-consuming and not always indicative of the truth.