How to find out which Joomla version you have

When you’re working on your Joomla website and you’ve come across an issue or you need to find out the answer to something specific, sometimes you need to find out the Joomla version you’re using to search for answers.

Many forums about Joomla or template providers will require your Joomla version information to be able to give you a solution or at least an idea of where to look for answers. Finding out your Joomla version is pretty simple and there are lots of ways you can do this.

Finding out your Joomla version if you have access to the /administrator area of the website

If you’ve got administrator access to your website (this means that you can log into your site when you go to www.mywebsite.com.au/administrator) it’s really easy to find out your Joomla version.

Joomla Admin Area

The first place you can look is at the bottom right of your browser screen once you’ve logged into your site. Depending on what version of Joomla you’re running, often the version will show up here.

System Information

If you would like some more detailed information about your Joomla version you can go to System / System Information and under the ‘System Information’ tab you will be able to find your Joomla version and your platform version (along with some other info like your PHP version, database version, etc).

Finding out a Joomla version if you don’t have access to the admin area

If you don’t have access to the admin area of your website it might be a little trickier to find out your Joomla version – however there are still a few little tricks you can use to find out this info if you know where to look.

By the look of the admin screen

Each version of Joomla has a particular look and feel for the /administrator screen. Whilst you won’t be able to find out the exact version of Joomla that’s being used, you will be able to tell which core version it is (1.5, 2.5 or 3).

See images below for Joomla versions:-

Joomla version 1.5

Joomla version 2.5

Joomla version 3.5

Use an online tool

We’ve saved the best ‘til last because this is by far the easiest way to find out what Content Management System someone is using. It’s fast, simple and free. Simply plug in a URL to https://whatcms.org and this great online tool will not only tell you what Content Management System a website is using (if they have it in their database) but it will also tell you what version! How easy is that!