This guide explains how to find the version of Discourse you’re using by inspecting the website’s source code.
Required user level: All users
Understanding what version of Discourse you are using can be important for troubleshooting, ensuring compatibility with plugins, and staying up-to-date. Here are the steps you can follow to determine the version of Discourse running on a given site.
Summary
This guide will cover:
- Viewing the source code of a Discourse site
- Locating the version metadata
- Understanding the version string
Viewing the source code
- Visit the target Discourse site in your web browser.
- Press the “view source” button in your web browser. The method varies between browsers:
- In Google Chrome, right-click anywhere on the page to bring up a context menu and select “View Page Source”.
- In Firefox, right-click and select “View Page Source”.
- In Edge, right-click and select “View Page Source”.
Locating the version metadata
Look for the meta version tag near the top of the source under the <head> section. It will look something like this:
<meta name="generator" content="Discourse 2026.3.0-latest - https://github.com/discourse/discourse version 896e810e1b2f4c9b8e17a6d5c3a2b1d0e8f7c6a5">
Understanding the version string
From the meta tag:
-
The version
Discourse 2026.3.0-latestuses a date-based format:YYYY.M.Pwhere the year and month indicate the release period, andPis the patch number.-
Latest: Most installations, including all official Discourse hosting, run the
latestchannel (indicated by the-latestsuffix) which gets new releases monthly. -
Stable: Stable releases use the same date-based version without the
-latestsuffix and are a bit more conservative.
-
Latest: Most installations, including all official Discourse hosting, run the
-
The specific internal version is referenced by the string at the end:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse version 896e810e1b2f4c9b8e17a6d5c3a2b1d0e8f7c6a5Take the first 7 characters of the version (
896e810in this example) and browse github.com/discourse/discourse/commits/main to find the commit that correlates to the version in the meta tag.
You can also search directly using the full version hash:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/search?q=hash%3A896e810e1b2f4c9b8e17a6d5c3a2b1d0e8f7c6a5&type=Commits
Example output
This will show you how far behind the main branch your current version is.
Last edited by @hugh 2024-06-20T01:40:00Z
Last checked by @hugh 2024-06-17T10:39:29Z
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