{"id":1131,"date":"2012-08-19T19:03:43","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T02:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.virendrachandak.com\/techtalk\/\/?p=1131"},"modified":"2013-10-06T15:45:53","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T22:45:53","slug":"how-to-remove-wordpress-version-number","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virendrachandak.com\/techtalk\/how-to-remove-wordpress-version-number\/","title":{"rendered":"How to remove WordPress version number"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By default WordPress adds a meta tag which displays the WordPress version number that your WordPress site is running on. The version number is added just for tracking. This information can be useful to hacker to identify which version of WordPress you are running. If you are not running the latest version of WordPress the hackers can try to target the known vulnerabilities in that version to hack your site.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note<\/strong>: This is just one way to identify the version. Also, even if this information is not available hackers might still try to hack it using other ways. So it is recommended that you always have the most up to date version of WordPress running.<\/p>\n<p>In this post I will show you some wrong and right ways to remove this information.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nWordPress adds the following meta tag to the head section of the site:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: xml; gutter: false; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\n&lt;meta name=&quot;generator&quot; content=&quot;WordPress 3.4.1&quot; \/&gt;\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>There are various ways that can be used to remove this information. Let&#8217;s first take a look at the wrong ways which people might suggest doing.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Method 1 (<strong>Wrong Way<\/strong>)<\/span>: Hacking the WordPress core.<br \/>\nEdit the <em>\/wp-includes\/defaults-filter.php<\/em> file and replace<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: php; gutter: false; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\nadd_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>with<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: php; gutter: false; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\nremove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>You should not do this, as when you upgrade WordPress you might no longer have this hack present.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Method 2 (<strong>Wrong Way<\/strong>)<\/span>: Remove wp_head()<br \/>\nWordPress executes the <em>wp_generator()<\/em> function whenever the <em>wp_head()<\/em> hook is called. This hook is normally inside the <em>header.php<\/em> file of your theme. Removing this hook from your <em>header.php<\/em> file might break other functions\/plugins on your site which rely on this hook.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Method 3<\/span>:<br \/>\nA good way to remove this information is to add the following line to the <em>functions.php<\/em> file of your theme.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: php; gutter: false; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\nremove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>This solution works and removes the generator information from the head section of your site. However, this is not a complete solution as the version information is also included in the RSS feeds.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Method 4<\/span>:<br \/>\nThe correct way to remove the version information both from the head section and RSS feeds of your site is to add the following code to your <em>functions.php<\/em> file of your theme.<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: php; gutter: false; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\nfunction my_remove_version_info() {\r\n     return '';\r\n}\r\nadd_filter('the_generator', 'my_remove_version_info');\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>By adding the above code, the WordPress version number will be removed from the head section and RSS feeds on your site.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: Check out my next post (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.virendrachandak.com\/techtalk\/\/how-to-remove-wordpress-version-parameter-from-js-and-css-files\/\" title=\"How to remove WordPress version parameter from JS and CSS files\" target=\"_blank\">How to remove WordPress version parameter from JS and CSS files<\/a>) to find out how we can remove the WordPress version from JS and CSS files source tags.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By default WordPress adds a meta tag which displays the WordPress version number that your WordPress site is running on. The version number is added just for tracking. This information can be useful to hacker to identify which version of WordPress you are running. If you are not running the latest version of WordPress the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[91],"tags":[124,101],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wordpress","tag-snippets","tag-wordpress-version"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How to remove WordPress version number - Virendra&#039;s TechTalk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By default WordPress adds a meta tag which displays the WordPress version number that your WordPress site is running on. The version number is added just\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.virendrachandak.com\/techtalk\/how-to-remove-wordpress-version-number\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to remove WordPress version number - Virendra&#039;s TechTalk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By default WordPress adds a meta tag which displays the WordPress version number that your WordPress site is running on. 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