Changing the Footer in WordPress

Find the source before you change anything. A WordPress footer comes from a block template part, a widget area, a theme option, or a PHP template in the theme. Four different places, four different editors, and no overlap between them. People lose afternoons here because they search the Customizer for something that lives in the Site Editor.

The four sources

Two minutes of checking saves the afternoon:

1. Open Appearance. If you see Editor and no Widgets or Customize, you have a block theme and the footer is a template part.
2. If you see Widgets, look for footer widget areas there first.
3. If you see Customize, open it and look for a Footer panel. Themes vary enormously in what they expose.
4. If none of those contain the text you want to change, it is hardcoded in the theme, or your page builder owns it.

The broader block-versus-classic distinction is covered in customising a WordPress theme; this page assumes you only want the footer.

Block themes: edit the template part

Go to Appearance → Editor → Patterns → Template Parts → Footer. Edit it like any page: select a block, change the text, add a navigation block or a paragraph, then Save.

Two things worth knowing:

• The change applies everywhere the part is used, which is usually every page. That is the point, and it is also why a mistake is visible site-wide immediately.
• You can revert. A modified template part shows a Clear customisations option, which restores the theme's original version. Your edits live in the database, not in theme files, so a theme update cannot overwrite them.

If the Editor will not load at all, that is a separate fault covered in the Site Editor not loading.

Classic themes: widgets first, then options

Most classic themes give the footer one to four widget areas. Add or remove blocks in Appearance → Widgets under the footer sections, and note that these are blocks now rather than the old widget boxes, as WordPress widgets explains.

What widgets cannot usually change is the bottom credit line. That comes from the theme, and where you change it depends on whether the theme author exposed it. Check Appearance → Customize for a Footer or Copyright field. Many commercial themes have one; many free themes do not.

Hardcoded footers: use a child theme

When the text lives in the theme's PHP, copy the file into a child theme rather than editing the original. Create the child theme first, per creating a WordPress child theme, then copy footer.php from the parent into it and edit your copy:

<?php
// wp-content/themes/your-child-theme/footer.php
?>
        </div><!-- keep the parent theme's closing markup -->

        <footer class="site-footer">
            <p class="site-credit">
                &copy; <?php echo esc_html(wp_date('Y')); ?>
                <?php echo esc_html(get_bloginfo('name')); ?>.
                All rights reserved.
            </p>
        </footer>

        <?php wp_footer(); ?>
    </body>
</html>

Two rules make this safe. Keep wp_footer(). Deleting it breaks every plugin that enqueues scripts in the footer, and the symptoms look random rather than related. Match the parent's opening and closing tags, or the layout collapses, because the div your footer closes was opened in header.php.

The credit line, and whether you may remove it

The "Proudly powered by WordPress" line is output by your theme, not by WordPress. Editing or removing it is allowed, and doing so has no effect on updates or support.

Theme authors' own credits are a different matter in practice rather than in law. A GPL-licensed theme cannot legally stop you editing its files, but some commercial themes put the credit behind a paid option, and a few re-add it on update. If a credit keeps coming back after you delete it, the theme is putting it back, and the fix is a theme option or a filter the author documented, not a repeated deletion.

Never hide it with CSS. display: none leaves the link in the markup where crawlers still read it, and hidden links pointing off-site are exactly what search engines treat as a quality signal against you.

The year that never updates

A hardcoded year is the most common footer complaint after the credit line. If the footer is a template part or a widget, replace the typed year with a shortcode or block that outputs the current date. If it is PHP, the one-liner above handles it. Either way, test it by checking the rendered page rather than the editor, which sometimes shows a cached value.

Common mistakes

• Editing the parent theme. The next update reverts it. Every time.
• Deleting wp_footer(). Scripts stop loading, and nothing points at the footer as the cause.
• Hiding the credit with CSS instead of removing it.
• Adding the footer navigation as a new menu without assigning a location. Create the menu, then assign it to the footer location, per creating a WordPress menu.
• Styling the footer with inline CSS scattered across pages. Put it in one place, as adding custom CSS to WordPress sets out.
• Assuming footer edits survive a theme change. Widget contents and template part customisations are tied to the theme. Note what you changed before switching, per changing a WordPress theme.

Verify

Load the front page logged out and confirm the change appears, then check one post and one archive page, because some themes use a different footer on different templates. View source and confirm your text is in the markup rather than hidden by CSS. Finally, if you edited PHP, check the browser console for script errors, which is how a missing wp_footer() announces itself.