Understanding wordpress latest version logic

Can someone please explain the logic behind calling version 3.8 the latest version? when it appears to be about 50 versions down the ladder? please see where 3.8 is on the ladder of upgrades at: https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Versions

I have an installation which is 3.8 and when I go Dashboard > Updates I get told it is the latest version???

Please see screenshots - maybe I was asleep in maths class at school all those years ago.

Any help appreciated.

Are you using managed WordPress hosting, or did you install the WordPress yourself?

When I searched for this issue on the WordPress site, I came up with this interesting thread https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-updates-not-showing-latest-wp-version-available which suggested that the poster’s core files had been edited by the host to prevent updates.

The site owner installed the WordFence plugin which discovered this change in code. See what it says when you install WordFence.

Or you could just try doing a manual update of your core files, and then see if this issue appears again the next time an update is available.

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Agree with @WebMachine – scan with WordFence to see if anything has been modified. If that doesn’t work, try disabling plugins and then the theme to isolate the issue.

I’ve seen this behaviour when developers have disabled updates in the theme. Check the file functions.php for something like:

add_action('after_setup_theme','remove_core_updates');

If it’s present, comment it out or remove it. Make sure you backup first so you can restore if needed.

Good luck @Argent

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The other thing may be that this version is so far behind that you can’t automatically upgrade.

Thanks guys, I’ll check that out.

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