Quite often in my line of work I’m expected to build from an existing web site. A little tech due diligence ahead of time is always nice and helpful. I just found this great site, Sitonomy, which will give you backend data on what a server is currently running. Are they using Apache or IIS, PHP or JSP, Movable Type or WordPress? Sure you can easily see this sometimes through the URL, but if a site uses rewrite urls or friendly URLs certain data isn’t as easily distinguishable. It’ll even pull out things you would need to dig into the actual code to see, such as which JavaScript library or blogging engine is being used, what advertsing networks do they work with. Using Sitonomy makes this easier, as well as putting this tye of data into hands of less technical people that would be lost digging through code.

Here’s what Sitonomy themselves lists for their own site:

	Name	Description
In-text Advertising	Infolinks	Infolinks, Inc. is a provider of In-Text advertising that enables online content publishers to benefit from premium In-Text ads while keeping most of the advertising revenue.
Share Widgets	AddThis	AddThis is the bookmarking and sharing button.
Stats tools	Google Analytics	Google Analytics is a free service that allows tracking and analysis of your blog visitors (where their come from and what they do on the site.
	Statcounter	StatsCounter provides website statistics service that allows detailed real-time visitors tracking and analysis.
Programming Languages	ASP.NET	ASP.NET is a web application framework owned and marketed by Microsoft.
Server Software	Microsoft-IIS	Microsoft-IIS is a set of Internet-based services for servers using Microsoft Windows.