Many of the users that run blogs and websites do not have in depth of what their site is built with. Information such as which software is running the website, what is the server etc are long forgotten once a site is up and running. Many a users are really not concerned about it and usually believe what their hosting providers tell them.

This does not matter to most but think when you want to start looking out for a new host, you would like to check that they have similar features. But as a lay user how will you be able to find that out?

It could mean sending a mail to your current technical support personnel which could take longer than you want to. Worried?

^[1] Well let’s put the worries aside Builtwith.com ^[1] is a site that tells you what your web site is built on, generating a profiling report on your site which contains the following information about your website.

Built with helps you profile any website providing you with information about what a site is built with, how it runs, what runs it and much more.

Here are the key areas that built with provides information about which is quite useful and you can make use of for your own personal use or making a decision about moving your hosting service to some other hosts.

Key Information Areas

• Who is hosting the site. This tells you about which host is currently hosting the website you are trying to query.
• Server Information. Key server information as to what the server operating system is, which web server runs the website could be Apache, IIS, Tomcat etc. It also provides you with the security that is provided by your hosting provider to keep your website safe. There could be additional information about other services that run on the server and is available to you.
• Analytics and Tracking. this tells you which analytics and tracking software a website owner uses to track incoming and outgoing traffic to their site.
• Widgets used. The number of widgets that are used by the current site, could be Google Search Widget, Technorati Widget, Alexa Widget etc.
• Frameworks used. This information basically tells you which software is running the website. It could be PHP, ASP, ASP.net, Java or any other technology that the site runs on. There is also additional information such as whether a site uses Flash and much more.
• Advertising Used. This lists the on page advertising that are run by third parties and do not include external widgets.
• Aggregation (Feed) Functionality. Tells you whether the current site provides you with aggregation services and what kind of aggregation services are provided. They could be RSS, ATOM etc.
• Document Information. This basically deals with what kind of document is being served whether it is simple HTML, XHTML Transitional or Strict along with whether the site uses CSS and JavaScript. The section also looks at licensing and whether you use any conditional entities with the HTML document.
• Encoding. This deals with the type of encoding the page is served in. It can be UTF-8 which is fairly common or ISO-8859-1 or Latin etc.

The information that you get from builtwith.com ^[1] is abundant and allows you to learn more about your server without having to worry about contacting your technical support.

Do you think such information will be useful to you? Do let me know though your valuable comments.