In last week’s technical post we covered how to Remove the Powered by WordPress Link in your footer, and this week we will look at the WordPress Generator Meta Tag. The WordPress generator tag displays your WordPress version to anyone who wants to know.
Displaying this tag publicly can be a security risk. If someone up to no good knows of a weakness in a certain version of WordPress they can easily look at the page source and see if you are running that version. Now that we know why the generator tag is a possible security risk lets see if your theme is displaying the generator tag and then look at several ways to remove it.
Is My Website Displaying the Generator Tag??
Lets find out whether or not you are displaying this information publicly. To do this go to your blog or website homepage, basically wherever your WordPress install displays. Once you are there you need to look at the source code, and doing this is a little different depending on what browser you are using.
- Internet Explorer: Top Menu -> View -> Source
- Firefox: Top Menu -> View -> Page Source
- Safari: Top Menu -> View -> View Source
- Chrome: Top Menu -> View -> Developer -> View Source
Do that and look for the generator tag which will look like this:
The tag will be in the upper portion of the code because it comes from the header.php file.
If you don’t see the tag congratulations you are good to go, but if you do read below and decide which method of removal is right for you.
Easier Method to Remove the WordPress Generator Tag
Just like everything else, there are a few plugins that will remove the code. I recommend this if you do not feel comfortable editing HTML code. The plugin that I have tested and used before is the Remove Generator Information PlugIn by Joan B. Giménez Sendiu. There are a few others that I have not tried, but have high ratings: Meta Tag Generator Remover by Dennis Hoppe and JR Remove Generator Metatag by Jacob Ras.
Advanced Removal of WordPress Generator Tag
You can also remove the tag yourself by deleting it from your themes header.php file. To do this you will need to log in to your WordPress installation. Once inside the back end you will need to click on the appearance tab on the right side menu, and then click on the editor link in the drop down.
Now that you are in the editor you need to select the Header (header.php) file. Once inside the editor look for this line of code:
<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(‘version’); ?>” />
This code will usually appear around the title tags, make sure you only delete the code above. Once you have deleted the generator tag all you need to do is click the blue update button and you are good to go.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Real simple and detailed tutorial. I don’t think anybody will require a plugin after going through this post
How is it going, you really saved me a lot of time with all the information you have on this website. I found just what that I was searching for ty
Hi i remove the code in the header, but viewing the source code of the site the meta name tag its continue showing thanks, have another solution?
Using one of the plug-ins listed in the bottom of the post should do the trick.
Hi Matt, thanks for linking to my Plugin.
A small notice: If you remove the meta generator tag from the header.php file of the theme you are not out of the woods. The point is that the meta tag will be included by WordPress itself. If you want to remove it you have to remove the hook from the “wp_head” event. And this is only possible with a line of php code and this is the reason i coded the plugin.
Best regards.