How to know the Version of Joomla Site without Admin Access

We were asked to provide an estimate for a Joomla client who wanted to know the feasibility of converting their Joomla site to Drupal. Before we provide an estimate it is our practice to review the existing setup of the client. The version of the CMS is what we check first when we do the review. Read on to know how to know the version of Joomla sit without admin access.

Since did not have admin access we had to review the site as an anonymous user. In Drupal, it is very easy to do this. Every unhacked Drupal site has a CHANGELOG.txt file in the root folder of the site which provides details about the current minor version the site is using. So if you wanted to know the version that Zyxware.com is using just access the file from the URL http://zyxware.com/CHANGELOG.txt and you should be able to see the text file with all the details.

Now it turns out that Joomla also provides something that is similar to Drupal's changelog.txt. There is an XML file with the site folder structure called Joomla.xml which has the version. The following is the link to the XML file.

https://www.joomla.org/administrator/manifests/files/joomla.xml

Hope this was helpful. Enjoy