If you’ve ever needed to know what WordPress version you are currently using, then you are in the right place. We are going to go through three different methods of checking this.
If you need to know the current version whether it’s for upgrading, troubleshooting an issue or whether you are just curious to know what WordPress version someone else is using, you can try one of these methods:
- 1. Method: Check the Admin Area
- 2. Method: Website’s Frontend (View Page Source)
- 3. Method: Access the version.php File
1. Method: Check the Admin Area
If you have access to the CMS, this will be your easiest method for finding the WordPress version.
There are actually quite a few areas within the CMS that display the currently installed version.
Option 1 – At a Glance
Once you have logged in to the backend, on the home page of the admin dashboard, you will find a window called “At a Glace”. This shows how many posts, pages, comments, the theme you currently have installed as well as the WordPress version your site is using.
If you can’t see this box for some reason, it’s possible you have either a plugin that removes it, a setting within the theme that hides it or you are using quite an old version of WordPress.
Option 2 – About WordPress Page
If you have a look at the very top left-hand side once you are logged in to the CMS, you will see a WordPress logo. If you hover over this and click ‘About WordPress’, it will take you to a page which shows the version you are currently using.
Even if you’re not updated to the latest version of WordPress, you’ll see the version number displayed prominently at the top as well as information about that update.
2. Method: Website’s Frontend (View Page Source)
If you can’t log in to the WordPress dashboard and need to find the WordPress version, then this option is for you.
If you view the page source of a WordPress website, you will be able to find the version as long as the developer hasn’t hidden this information. Some developers do take steps to make this information private, so this won’t work on all sites, only on those that have left the default settings intact.
Let’s load up the homepage of the WordPress website you want to check, right-click on the page and then click View Page Source in your web browser. This will open a new tab which will show you the page’s HTML and CSS code. Now do CTRL + F or CMD + F to bring up the search feature.
Now try searching for the generator tag which will tell you the WordPress version the site is using. Do note that some themes do disable this option though.
Option 2 – View Page Source
3. Method: Access the version.php File
The most accurate way of finding which WordPress version you are using is having a look at the contents of the version.php file. For this, you will need access to FTP. If you don’t have this, you could always install the File Manager Plugin. If you do have hosting access, you could always just check cPanel/Plesk and view the files from within there.
You can connect using FTP using FileZilla or your preferred FTP Application.
Once you have access to the files, navigate to your /wp-includes/ directory then open the version.php file in your preferred text editor.
The version of your WordPress installation will be on line 16, which should look like this:
$wp_version = '5.5.1';
Fear not, others won’t be able to see this file because the information is written in PHP and it is not a part of the pages HTML. that way, no version details are displayed when your website is opened in a web browser.
Conclusion
Whether your reason for wanting to know which WordPress version you are running is due to troubleshooting, performing an upgrade or you’re just curious to see what version other people are using, the three methods we have gone through today will surely help find what you are looking for.
If you want to find the version of your own WordPress site, the best and most reliable way is to log into your admin and check the version.php file.
