How to Edit the Footer in WordPress in a Few Easy Steps

If you are new to WordPress, doing something as simple as editing a WordPress footer might look complicated. For this reason, we created this tutorial to show you how easy it is.

Usually, after installing WordPress, you’ll find the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” text on your new site. If you have already installed a theme, the text may be different.

You may be wondering “am I allowed to remove this?” “Isn’t it against the law?” Well, WordPress was released under the GPL license, which permits you to modify it.

So, you can replace “proudly powered by WordPress” with something more professional. Feel free to add custom text, images, or links to your footer. We’ll teach you how.

Content:

How to Remove “Proudly Powered by WordPress” Branding From Footer Content
- Removing branding with the theme customizer
- Removing branding through footer code
How to edit WordPress footer widgets
- Using customizer to edit the footer
- Adding widgets through WordPress admin Dashboard

How to Remove “Proudly Powered by WordPress” Branding From Footer Content

Before we show you how to remove branding we have to tell you how not to do it. While researching this topic we have seen that people recommend editing CSS. The code they recommend using goes something like this:

.site-info(

display:none;

)

You really should not use this code. This is not a good practice and it’s going to hurt your SEO. This code hides the text it does not remove it. So, what’s the big deal? You may ask.

Well, Google detests it. As a result, your site won’t rank well in the search results. There are two other ways to edit your WordPress footer to remove the branding without hurting your SEO.

Removing branding with the theme customizer

Almost all of the themes will let you customize the footer widget through a customizer. However, you may not be able to change everything within the theme’s footer. This is why we’ll look at how to do it through code later on.

For this example, we’ll use the OceanWP theme.

To edit the theme follow these steps:

First, open WordPress admin Dashboard.
Then go to Appearance/Customize.
Next, look for the section that has a copyright text. For our theme, it is located under the Footer Bottom section.
Finally, change the text or remove it.

Removing branding through footer code

Not all themes will permit you to change footer branding through a customizer. This is why we are going to edit theme files directly to change footer settings. Before you start editing your WordPress footer, it’s recommended that you make a child theme and a backup.

For this example, we are going to edit the WordPress default theme called “twenty seventeen”. To change the footer’s code, follow these steps:

Open WordPress Admin Dashboard.
Then go to Appearance >> Theme Editor
Next, in Theme Files open template-parts >> footer >> site-info.php.
Finally, remove the branding link. That is everything in between tags <a and </a>.

Alternatively, you can edit the footer.php file. You can find it here: wp-content/themes/yourtheme/footer.php file. Then, remove this snippet of code: get_template_part( ‘template-parts/footer/site’, ‘info’ );

If you do it this way you are removing the info section altogether.

How to edit WordPress footer widgets

Almost all WordPress themes will have a footer template that you can edit. There is also an option of adding a custom footer to a theme through code or plugin. In any case to change the footer look you have few options.

The first and easiest way is to use a customizer if the theme supports it. There is also an option of adding a widget to the footer through the WordPress admin panel. Otherwise, you can edit the code directly, if you can.

Changing footer through code is out of scope for this post. That said, don’t be scared of code (it does not bite😀). Do a google search, and you’ll find a guide on how to do it. Just make sure you first backup your theme and always edit a child theme to be safe.

Using customizer to edit the footer

To edit the footer in WordPress with customizer follow these steps:

Go to Appearance >> Customize.
When the customizer loads, go to the Footer Widgets section.
You can define the look of widgets in this section by changing text, background, borders, links colors, padding, turning on or off parallax, etc.

Once you are satisfied with the look of the footer it’s time to add widgets. Footer is divided into widget sections. For every section, you can add as many widgets as you want.

Each widget will appear under the previous widget in sections. And sections are arranged from left to right. We hope this was not confusing. Anyway, once you start adding widgets you’ll see how it works. To add a widget follow these steps:

First, go to the Widget section in customizer.
Then open Footer 1.
After that, click on the Add a Widget button.
Then select the Widget you like to add. In our example, we added recent posts.

Yeah, that was easy. Now, just for practice repeat this for Footer 2 section. We added a calendar to Footer 2 as you can see in the picture below.

Adding widgets through WordPress admin Dashboard

Alternatively, we can edit the footer in the WordPress admin panel. So let’s see how to do this.

First, open the WordPress admin panel.
Then, go to Appearance/Widgets.
To add a widget to the footer just drag and drop the widget from the left side to the desired footer section on the right side.

Conclusion

We presented you with a few options on how to edit a footer in WordPress. Now you need to go and create an awesome footer for your website. While we did not go over any plugin, there are a lot of WordPress footer plugins.

Using one of those plugins might save you time so it’s something worth looking into. Also, if you are in the process of building a website, choosing a theme with good footer options is a good idea.

For more WordPress tutorials check the rest of our blog. If you have further questions write them in the comments section below. Have a great day!

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