How to Remove the Footer Credit in WordPress Themes

and










Step 3: Paste the Code into Remove Footer Credit



Go back to Tools > Remove Footer Credit and paste the code you copied into the “Step 1: Enter text/HTML to remove (one per line)” field.







Step 4: Add Your Own Text and Save



In the “Step 2: Enter your own footer credit (one per line)” field, enter your new footer credit (or leave it blank to remove the line altogether). In this example, I am simply putting “My blog.”







Click the “Save” button.







That should remove the footer credit from your WordPress site and replace it with your text or code.







Alternate Method: Remove the Credit Line by Editing the footer.php File for Your Theme



Using a plugin is a fast and easy way to replace the footer credit on every page of your site. But it comes at the cost of the resources needed to scan every page that loads looking for the code and replacing it on the fly.



You can avoid that by editing the footer.php file for your theme to make the change. The process is a bit more involved, but it will save the resources used on every page load by plugins such as Remove Footer Credit.



Before We Proceed…



Never edit WordPress core or theme files without creating a child theme first.



Working in the child theme has a couple of advantages. First, if you break something, you can revert to the parent theme until you figure out what went wrong.



Second, and perhaps more importantly, when you make changes to a child theme, they will not be overwritten or erased when you update either your theme or WordPress itself.



Once you have created a child theme, mouse over the “Appearance” link and click the “Theme Editor” link.







Click the “Activate” button for your child theme.







Open up your FTP program or cPanel file editor and copy the footer.php file from your parent theme to your child theme.



In most FTP programs, you won’t be able to copy and paste files, in which case you’ll download footer.php from the parent theme and then upload it to the child theme.



So in my example here, I FTP’ed to:


/wp-content/themes/twentynineteen



downloaded footer.php, and then uploaded it to:


/wp-content/themes/twentynineteen-child



Now in your WordPress admin panel, mouse over the “Appearance” link and click the “Theme Editor” link.







Choose your child theme from the drop-down and click the “Select” button.







Now, as we did when using the plugin, look for:






in the footer.php file. I’m using a child of the Twenty Nineteen theme, so we’re going to replace:




	,


	




with:



“My blog.”











Click the “Update File” button, and the footer credit link will be changed.











Going Further



I used text here to simplify the demonstration, but you can replace the default footer credit with more than just text. The fact that you can use PHP in the footer makes some cool things possible. Like automatically showing the current year if you use a copyright notice.



To do that you can use something like:



$thisyear = date("Y");
print (" My blog ©$thisyear by me. ");
?>







Am I allowed to remove the footer credit from WordPress?



Yes.



WordPress is licensed under GPL (General Public License). One of the freedoms allowed by GPL is the “freedom to change the software to suit your needs.”



So don’t worry, you aren’t going to land in hot water when you remove the footer credit from WordPress.



Have you used other methods to change or remove the footer credits in your theme? Do you use a child theme when you make changes? Let me know in the comments.