This version component reflects the "version" of the StaticContent objects which we cache server-side. If the layout of those objects changes between releases, errors occur when loading them from cache. By using a separate version value, which can be incremented on its own after a change has been made to the StaticContent class, we can avoid loading older cached content and in turn take advantage of these changes faster, without needing to intervene operationally.
common ------ This directory contains common code shared between LMS and CMS, such as Mako templates, CSS, and Coffescript.