# Plugin and Versioning Guidelines

The following guidelines provide information on how the developer should change their version number, that is they should follow the Semantic Versioning 2.0 specification. The Designer API follows the same versioning guidelines.

Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, increment the:

1. MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes.
2. MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner, and
3. PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.

This is how Designer chooses whether a plugin can be updated or not. The developer should use the Display Version property (see the Plugin Configuration topic for more information) if the developer wishes to display a different version to the end user.