This repository shares a small scan of library website platforms conducted in Jan 2020.
The test group is composed of the 14 public universities in the Orbis Cascade Alliance. Results of the scan are recorded in "library_websites_scan.csv".
- Visit university website (
university_url
) and view source to discover the platform used to build it (university_platform
) - Visit university library website (
library_url
) and view source to discover the platform used to build it (library_platform
) - Compare the two platforms to determine if they are the same (
same?
).
To determine the platform, use "View Page Source" and "Inspect" developer tools to look at the base HTML code. Check the HTML for platform signatures. Occasionally, the main index page has more customization and added features than other content pages, thus is harder to determine the platform--in that case, visit a less busy page to view the code.
Drupal based sites:
- usually include the generator meta tag with the major version number,
<meta name="Generator" content="Drupal 8 (https://www.drupal.org)" />
<meta name="generator" content="Drupal 7 (https://www.drupal.org)" />
- older sites usually load CSS as a huge series of import statements, with the file paths including "/modules/", e.g.
@import url("https://example.edu/modules/system/system.base.css?q4zjuk");
- newer sites usually load CSS as a smaller series of CSS files, with the file paths including "/files/", and filenames with a bunch of random characters, e.g.
<link rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="/files/css/css_m7u_1cZUfQut08KzfMvXKdCtsaNcW8FRd5XXUI_Z_cU.css?q55bom" />
- usually have a JS file, JS object, and element attributes that include "drupal", e.g.
data-drupal-selector="drupal-settings-json"
- often use links/src that contain "/node/"
WordPress based sites:
- usually include the generator meta tag with version number,
<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 4.9.10" />
<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 5.3.2" />
- usually contain the short link "s.w.org" (which resolves to wordpress.org), e.g.
<link rel='dns-prefetch' href='//s.w.org' />
- usually use asset paths that contain "wp-", e.g.
href='//example.edu/wp-content/themes/eu-2014/style.css?ver=3.6'
ASP.NET based sites:
- usually include classes that include
aspNet
, e.g.class="aspNetHidden"
. - usually contain "viewstate" variables such as
<input type="hidden" name="__VIEWSTATE" id="__VIEWSTATE" value="0DhWp/KtK1Wf-some-crazy-string" />
and other ids with "__" in front of the name. - usually contain links/src ending in
.aspx
or.axd
- may contain a generator meta tag giving a specific CMS platform, e.g.
<meta name="Generator" content="Sitefinity 11.2.6900.0 PE" />
- may use asset paths that include a specific CMS name, e.g.
src="https://example.azureedge.net/sitefinity-production/images/example-icon.png?sfvrsn=11106867"
PHP based sites:
- contain links/src ending in
.php