Remote Identification of SharePoint Version

SharePoint has lot of hidden files and methods which provides lot of information about the server and sites. Now we can see one of the hidden area from the vast of SharePoint Sea.

SharePoint sites has the hidden file which helps to identify the version of SharePoint Server. We can access the below file from any browser to get the information.
http://sharepoint-site/_vti_inf.html
This allows to identify the SharePoint version remotely.

We can get the information by viewing the html source of the browsed above location.

View Source of http://sharepoint-site/_vti_inf.html (SharePoint 2010 Sites)
<!– FrontPage Configuration Information
FPVersion=”14.00.0.000″
FPShtmlScriptUrl=”_vti_bin/shtml.dll/_vti_rpc”
FPAuthorScriptUrl=”_vti_bin/_vti_aut/author.dll”
FPAdminScriptUrl=”_vti_bin/_vti_adm/admin.dll”
TPScriptUrl=”_vti_bin/owssvr.dll”
–>

View Source of http://sharepoint-site/_vti_inf.html (SharePoint 2016 Sites)
<!– FrontPage Configuration Information
FPVersion=”16.00.0.000″
FPShtmlScriptUrl=”_vti_bin/shtml.dll/_vti_rpc”
FPAuthorScriptUrl=”_vti_bin/_vti_aut/author.dll”
FPAdminScriptUrl=”_vti_bin/_vti_adm/admin.dll”
TPScriptUrl=”_vti_bin/owssvr.dll”
–>

SharePoint provides another configuration file to get the accurate version of SharePoint site installed to the server by accessing
http://sharepoint-site/_vti_pvt/service.cnf

Result for SharePoint 2010
vti_encoding:SR|utf8-nl
vti_extenderversion:SR|14.0.0.7116

Result for SharePoint 2016
vti_encoding:SR|utf8-nl
vti_extenderversion:SR|16.0.0.4316

Happy learning :)