WordPress by default adds a version number when installing the software. Though this is not a problem in general, it can cause some security problems if you are using outdated version. If you winder which version your site is using, there are many ways to find it easily. You can either find WordPress version of your site by logging into your administrator panel or from the browser’s frontend.
Why to Find WordPress Version Number?
You may use many plugins and a theme to create a beautiful website. These plugins and themes get frequent updates which are compatible to specific WordPress version. Let’s take an example of the popular Yoast SEO plugin and below is the plugin details on WordPress.org page.
There are two important details, you can find in the right sidebar related to WordPress version.
- The plugin will work only on WordPress version 5.8 or later.
- It was tested up to version 5.9.3.
Now that if your WordPress site is using either version 5.7 or version 6.0, then this plugin may not work properly.
You can also see the plugin details from administrator panel when you search the plugins under “Plugins > Add New” section by clicking on “More Details” link. If you have an already installed plugin, you can click on “View details” link showing below any plugin under “Plugins > Installed Plugins” section. This will show clear details the plugin is “Compatible up to” which version number. As you can see in the below screenshot, Crayon Syntax Highlighter plugin is compatible up to version 4.2.0 and was not tested with the current WordPress version of the site.
Similarly, your theme also needs to be compatible with the WordPress version of your site. The problem comes when your theme or plugin is not compatible with your current WordPress version. And the question is how will find which WordPress version is currently running on your website.
Find WordPress Version of Your Website
There are multiple ways to find the WordPress version from admin panel or from the frontend.
1. Check Your Dashboard
When you logged into your administrator panel, you will land on the “Dashboard” section. Otherwise, you can navigate to “Dashboard > Home” menu from the sidebar. Check below “At a Glance” section to find the current WordPress version used on your site.
2. Check At Bottom of Admin Pages
Next is also a super easy way to find the version. Simply, scroll down to the bottom of your admin panel and you will find the current WordPress version number there. Though this works on most of the admin pages like “Dashboard”, “Posts > All Posts”, “Media > Library”, it does not show the version in Gutenberg editor.
3. Check Updates Section in Admin Panel
You can also find the version by navigating to “Dashboard > Updates” section in your admin panel. Here you can see the “Current version:” of your site and check whether automatic updates are enabled on your site.
4. Check About.php Admin Page
Many WordPress users do not know that you can find many details about your site under about.php page. You can access this page by selecting the “About WordPress” menu by clicking on the WordPress icon showing on top left corner of the admin screen. Alternatively, you can use “yoursite.com/wp-admin/about.php” shortcut URL (make sure you are logged in to admin panel) to access the page. It will show the major WordPress version as a banner and the current version of your site under “What’s New” section.
5. Check Site Health Section
There are some themes and plugins like WooCommerce will show you server status information. This normally contains the version of your plugins, themes and WordPress. With the standard WordPress installation, you can find the derails by navigating to “Tools > Site Health” section. Click on “Info” tab and then click “WordPress” heading to view your current version.
6. Check Source Code in Browser Frontend
If you are not logged in to your admin panel or want to check the version of any other WordPress site, then there is a way for that.
- Simply open the site and right click on the page.
- Select “View Page Source” or similar option from the context menu.
- This will open the source code of the page in a new browser window.
- Press “Control + F” in Windows or “Command ” + F” in Mac to open the search option.
- Type generator and the browser will highlight the meta generator tag in the head section of the page.
- This meta generator tag will show the “content” as your current WordPress version.
The meta tag will look like below on any WordPress site by showing the WordPress version used on that site (5.9.2 in this example. Since anyone can see this information, it is good to hide this meta tag and other occurrences of WordPress version to protect your WordPress site.
<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 5.9.2" />7. Using Browser Extensions
There are browser extensions available for version check both for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. You can install one of the extensions and check the version of your WordPress site.
8. Check in RSS Feed
You can also view the version number in RSS feed URL of your WordPress site. Open the RSS feed of your site which is generally ”yoursite.com/feed” and search for “generator” to find the WordPress version. You can also right click on the feed page to view the source code and find the version number.
9. Styles and Scripts
Most of the admin scripts and style sheets also append the default WordPress version at the end of the URL like “?ver=5.9.2″. You can view this by right clicking and viewing the source code of any WordPress site.
Readme.html – Obsolete Option
Earlier, WordPress software was showing the version in readme.html page. You can open this page from the browser by simply adding readme.html suffix to your URL like “yoursite.com/readme.html”. However, this has been removed to improve the security and many security plugins also offer an option to delete this page as it can be accessed by anyone.
Final Words
Now you know how to find the WordPress version of your site. If required you can reinstall the current version or update to the latest available version by navigating to “Dashboard > Updates” menu. If the plugin or theme is not working with your setup, then you may need to find an alternate option that works for you.
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