Home HowTo

HowTo : Remove the generator meta-tag in Joomla

Written by: Muninder

Updated: August, 10, 2010

WordPress is considered as a giant Blogging tool but when it comes to Content Management Systems (CMS), Joomla is the king. Though both can’t be compared as they are used differently for different purposes. With Joomla you can build a CMS, blogging site (not popular, but it could be built up) & as it’s open source you can even use it for commercial websites. You may think making a website is Joomla is simple. No, it isn’t.
It’s not just a framework where you can search for quality (Premium for free kinda) themes & present it to your client. If you want to make a quality site using Joomla, you need to just work hard just as you do in Custom design. Though it’s plugins/components/modules can be very useful. Still there are deep customizations involved.
generator-meta-tag
If you fall in the category of users/companies who offer Joomla customizations or build sites with Joomla and you’re wondering HowTo remove the ‘generator’ meta-tag to let nobody know that you’ve used Joomla.
There are many methods of removing/renaming it. But here I will give only the method I have tried out & was successful with it. It’s the easiest of them all too.

Removing the ‘Generator’ Meta-Tag

1. Goto to hosting panel where you have hosted your Joomla site
2. Open File Manager & navigate to this path,
/public_html/domain/libraries/joomla/document/html/renderer/head.php

  • Carefully replace the domain with your own domain / sub-domain.

filepath-for-removing-the-generator-meta-tag
3. Edit that file (head.php) & search for,
$strHtml .= $tab.'<meta name="generator" content="'.$document->getGenerator().'" />'.$lnEnd;
4. After you find it; just add two slashes (//) before it, So now the code becomes,
//$strHtml .= $tab.'<meta name="generator" content="'.$document->getGenerator().'" />'.$lnEnd;
5. Cheers! The Generator tag will no longer appear when anyone views your site’s meta-information.
To explain more about the two slashes (//), it’s basically a comment tag used to add comments,copyright,information to an editor. Adding this will not remove the code but will prevent it from displaying it. It doesn’t hide it, so don’t worry about rankings & penalties.
Do you know any other method which is simpler than this & applies to most of the theme, then share your method with me using the Comments Section!

by