What version of WordPress do I have?

So you are asking yourself “what version of WordPress do I have?” Well, it’s actually quite easy to find out and there are a few ways to do so.

To keep in mind is that it’s always a good idea to have the latest WordPress version to keep your site safe and secure from hackers.

There are a couple of ways to answer your question on:

“What version of WordPress do I have?”

There are six methods we can use to find out the version of your WordPress installation.

• View the WordPress about page
• Look at the WordPress admin area 
• Have a look at the HTML meta tag on the website
• Check the version.php file for information
• View the readme.html file (Quick and easy)
• RSS Feed
• How to hide and secure your WordPress version?

View the WordPress about page

On the “About WordPress page, you can easily find out what version of WordPress do I have.

The about us page is located in the top left corner. There is a WordPress logo on it and by hovering over it you can see a menu popping out. Select the “About WordPress” link and you will get into a page that tells you the version of your installation.

Look at the WordPress admin area

From the WordPress dashboard you can also easily find out what WordPress version you are on. By clicking the Dashboard link and going to “Updates” you can easily see what version of WordPress you are on. Here, you can also reinstall your WordPress installation in case there are any issues with your website.

Have a look at the HTML meta tag on the website

If you can’t access the admin dashboard of your WordPress installation and still needs to find out what version the installation are, you can find out by checking the HTML meta tag.

This does not always work, for example you may have disabled the meta information of your WordPress website which makes it impossible to find the WordPress version via HTML.

Check the version.php file for information

A more complex way to check your WordPress installation version is by checking the version.php file.

This file is located in your WordPress installation root, within the wp-includes folder. You need a file manager or FTP to access the file. Once you find it you can check the version of the WordPress installation by checking line 16.

View the readme.html file (Quick and easy)

This way is very easy as long as the readme.html file still exist in the root folder of your WordPress installation.

You can easily find out the answer to your question “What version of WordPress do I have” by going to yourdomain.com/readme.html.

This method only works on older versions of WordPress. This feature is removed in newer readme.html files.

Check the RSS feed for version number.

Another way to find out “What version of WordPress do I have?” is by checking the RSS feed of your website.

You can easily find your feed by going to yourdomain.com/feed and search for “WordPress”. (Using CTRL+F).

This might not work on every website as some does hide this. By default it’s enabled by WordPress and you can find the version but in a few cases this might not work out as expected.

How to hide and secure your WordPress version?

Displaying the version of your WordPress website isn’t the best thing to do. It might pose a security threat and I highly suggest you to disable it.

You can do this quite easy by going to your WordPress dashboard, then into “Appearance” -> “Editor”. Check so the correct theme is select and then enter “functions.php”.

Now copy the following line of code and enter it on the last line of the file and hit “Update file”.

remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator')

Now your WordPress version won’t be visible to anyone but you.