EAGLE SOLUTIONS
In short: Of 77 Harghita company websites, 39 run WordPress and 28 show their version: 14 are on the latest release, 7.1.2, and 6 are still on the 5.x branch or older. Contact Form 7 shows its version on 16 sites, and on 13 of them it is not the latest.
An outdated WordPress install rarely breaks anything you can see right away, which is exactly why it is easy to forget. In the sixth part of the series on the websites of 100 companies in Harghita County, I looked at how many company websites run on WordPress, which version they use, and whether that version can be read from the outside.
Let me say it up front: this data does not tell you whether a site is vulnerable. I measured which version is running and how far behind the latest it is. An old version is a risk, but on its own it proves nothing.
How I measured
The measurement was taken on 27 September 2026. The sample: the 50 largest companies in Harghita County from the Termene 2025 revenue ranking, and 50 small businesses from different sectors. Of the 81 working websites, this extended check ran without errors on 77, and the numbers refer to those. I loaded each homepage in a Playwright-based browser and read only what the site publishes on its own: the generator meta tag and the version marker on the files it loads. I did not request any admin or hidden address.
Limits:
- I can only see the WordPress version where the site prints it. Where it is hidden, it may be current or old.
- I read plugin versions from the
?ver=parameter of the loaded files. For many plugins this is the version of a bundled library rather than of the plugin itself, so I am not publishing a general plugin figure, only one for Contact Form 7, where the parameter reliably shows the plugin version. - The small-business half contains only companies with a working website.
Every second company website runs WordPress
Of the 77 websites, 39 (51%) run on WordPress: 15 of 27 (56%) among large companies and 24 of 50 (48%) among small businesses. Of the plugins I could identify from the loaded files, the most common is Contact Form 7 (16 websites), followed by Elementor (11) and WooCommerce (8).
Outdated WordPress: half of the visible versions are behind
- Of the 39 WordPress websites, 28 (72%) print their exact version in the page source.
- Of those, 14 (50%) run the latest release, 7.1.2, and one more runs an earlier release of the 7.1 branch.
- 13 websites are on an older branch, and 6 of them (21% of the 28) are still on 5.x or older. The oldest visible version is 4.3.34, from a branch released in 2015.
Among large companies, 3 of 9 visible versions are current; among small businesses, 11 of 19. These are small numbers, so I treat the difference as a hint only.
What does an old version mean?
- The WordPress team officially supports only the latest major version. Older branches may still get security fixes, but there is no guarantee. You can see every release in the wordpress.org release archive.
- New versions of plugins and themes eventually drop support for old WordPress and PHP versions. On an old core, the plugins often cannot be updated either.
- The further behind a site is, the riskier the update itself becomes: bringing a 4.x site up to 7.1 is more of a small project than a click. Here is what to do if your site breaks after an update.
- A visible version number helps automated scanners pick targets. Hiding it is worth doing, but it is no substitute for updating.
The Contact Form 7 example
Contact Form 7 is the most widespread form plugin, and its ?ver= parameter reliably shows the plugin version. Its version is visible on 16 websites, and the latest is 6.1.7:
- 3 websites are up to date;
- 13 websites run an older version, 6 of them still on 5.x, and the oldest one on 4.4.2.
The form is the part of the website through which visitors send data to the server. Some plugin updates are security fixes, and an old version does not get them. If a form has not been updated for years, it is also worth checking whether its emails still arrive at all.
A five-minute self-check
- In the dashboard, on the Updates screen, are there pending WordPress, plugin or theme updates?
- In the page source (Ctrl+U), search for
generator. If there is a version number, is it the latest? - Is there a plugin in your list that has not been updated for a year, or that its author no longer maintains?
- Do you have a backup before you update, and do you know how to restore it?
Here is why WordPress needs regular maintenance. If you would rather not deal with it, send me your website address and I will tell you where it stands. My monthly maintenance plans include tested updates and backups from day one.
