# Strange Behavior When Using an Odd User Agent

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/strange-behavior-when-using-an-odd-user-agent/162811
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [September 2, 2020, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strange-behavior-when-using-an-odd-user-agent/162811 "2020-09-02T15:29:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![RiversideRocks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/riversiderocks/32/178411_2.png) [@RiversideRocks](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RiversideRocks)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2020, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strange-behavior-when-using-an-odd-user-agent/162811/1 "2020-09-02T15:29:53Z")

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Hello,

For testing my website, I often change my user agent in my browser. For example, I will change it to something such as Riverside Rocks. However, when I visit discourse with the non traditional user agent active, I see an old version, like so:

`Riverside Rocks` User Agent:

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/3/2/32e23086dd641a11b61171a1da83b0d8c5b0f235.png)

`Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i586; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0` User Agent:

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/e/e/ee49cdb3eb1823c2798389f47cf92b583f28430e.png)

While this is not a useful bug, I am just wondering why this happens. Is it to make it easier for crawlers to view content?

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2020, 4:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strange-behavior-when-using-an-odd-user-agent/162811/2 "2020-09-02T16:49:25Z")

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You are likely getting the web crawler view, yes. This is determined by the `user-agent` header sent in the HTTPS request.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![RiversideRocks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/riversiderocks/32/178411_2.png) [@RiversideRocks](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RiversideRocks)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2020, 5:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strange-behavior-when-using-an-odd-user-agent/162811/3 "2020-09-02T17:21:40Z")

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Ah, good to know, thanks!