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How do you Reverse Engineer a Site?

by freemen14
7 replies
I'm looking at some sites on Flippa and wondering the best way to reverse engineer and research them. If you would be willing to share your methods I would appreciate it.
#engineer #flippa #research #reverse #reverse engineer #site
  • Profile picture of the author ptaylor98
    By "reverse engineer," do you mean look at the source code? All browsers have a tool to
    view the source code for the site's pages. I'll assume you understand HTML.
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    • Profile picture of the author CyberAlien
      Originally Posted by ptaylor98 View Post

      By "reverse engineer," do you mean look at the source code? All browsers have a tool to
      view the source code for the site's pages. I'll assume you understand HTML.
      I'm wondering the same thing, or are you talking about just how to research them to find out if they're legit?
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  • Profile picture of the author tedwood
    If you're looking to reverse engineer them from an SEO perspective it's worthwhile using a tool such as opensiteexplorer.org. It would show all of the links and tell you how to basically replicate it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Dan Curtis
      Some sites require no "engineering" at all. Most WordPress sites are simply text. They can be reproduced by copying and pasting, and yes, you can find whatever you need in the source code including files for javascript and css.

      But some sites have a great deal of engineering. A site like Ebay or eDiets or Plenty of Fish has a huge "backend." What you see on the screen is trivial compared to the computing power that runs the interactive aspects of the site.

      Sophisticated sites cannot really be "duplicated" unless you have access to the code that they run on, and no site owner would intentionally give you access to that.

      However, a competent programmer can create code that will duplicate the functions of any website. But they have to be quite competent for anything but a trivial application, and it takes time. Therefore the costs can be quite high.
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