How To Edit Footer In WordPress
Need to edit footer in WordPress website to add new site info? Or you might be looking to remove the “Proudly powered by WordPress” text in the bottom. Footer is a key component of your website which in most cases contains a lot of important information on your site. And, updating it every once in a while to incorporate your business or website changes, is a crucial part of your website maintenance.
In this guide, we will go through some of the common ways to edit your WordPress footer.
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How Do You edit footer in WordPress?
Having a well-designed and updated footer on your WordPress site is crucial for delivering a seamless user experience and reinforcing your brand identity. It’s an essential part of your website that can be customised to include critical information, contact details, social media links, and legal disclaimers.
There are a few ways to edit your WordPress website footer. If you are wondering ‘Where do I edit the footer in WordPress?’, you can edit the footer from one of the following.
- Editing footer through WordPress customiser
- Editing footer through Widgets section
- Editing footer with functions.php theme file
- Editing footer through a plugin
How to edit WordPress footer using WordPress customizer?
Using WordPress customizer is one of the easiest ways to make changes to your footer. WordPress customizer is a built in tool that allows you to make changes to your website appearance.
Below are the steps to edit your footer using WordPress customizer.
Log in to your WordPress dashboard and Navigate to Appearance > Customize.
Locate the Footer Section within the Customizer, find the section labelled Footer. This section’s name and location might vary depending on your theme.
Click on the footer section to expand it.
Make changes to the footer content, which may include text, widgets, or menus. The availability of the sections to edit may differ with the WordPress theme used.
Once the changes are finalised, save changes and publish.
How to edit footer widget in WordPress?
Some of the WordPress themes might use widgets to manage footer content. For these websites, you will need to edit widgets to make changes to your footer. You can also add social media icons and other components using this method.
Go to Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress dashboard.
After this you will need to locate the Footer Widget area. This is usually labelled as footer or something like Footer Widget, Footer 1, etc.
Add or Remove Widgets by using drag/drop to add these to the footer areas. Click on individual widgets to configure their settings.
Once the update is complete, Click on Update on the top-right save changes.
Editing footer in WordPress with footer.php theme file
WordPress themes have PHP files that control all components of your website, including footer. Using this method is only recommended for advanced users or those with coding experience. This requires you to make changes to your core theme files and even small errors might break your website. Make sure to backup codes or files before making changes.
Follow these steps to edit your footer through the footer.php file.
Go to Appearance > Theme Editor and On the right-hand side, find and click on footer.php.
Make the necessary changes to the code to update your footer and click Update File to save your changes.
How to edit the Default copyright footer Text in WordPress?
You can remove the WordPress copyright footer text either from the WordPress customiser or the footer.php theme file. Some themes might provide an option to remove copyright information through the customiser but using the footer.php file is more generic and suitable for all WordPress sites.
Navigate to WP Admin > Appearance > Theme Editor and locate the footer.php file on the right side of the screen.
Search for ‘Proudly powered by WordPress’ in the PHP file and delete the line containing this text.
Click on the Update file to save the changes.
How to entirely remove WordPress footer?
Footers are essential to most websites but some website owners may decide to not use the entire footer section or create a footer look alike with other custom sections from the body unlike using a global footer. You can do this in a couple of ways – removing the footer.php file contents or hiding the section using CSS in customiser. Obviously, removing one of the core theme files is not the best of ways to do this unless you are an expert.
Follow the steps below to remove your entire footer using CSS.
Go to WP-Admin > Appearance > Customiser
Click on Additional CSS.
Add the following code snippet to the customiser.
footer{
display:none;
}
Click on Publish on the top to save changes.
WordPress Footer Edit Common Issues & Best Practices
Editing WordPress footers at times may not be as straightforward. Here are some of the challenges we commonly encounter while making footer updates.
- Changes not appearing on your site are one of the most common issues you might face while making all sorts of website updates. This is generally caused by cache and to solve this, clear your site and browser cache to see the updates. Sometimes, you may also need to check server cache along with clearing the cache plugins installed. You can also add /? nocache=1 to the end of the UR to view the non cached version of the webpage. For example, www.example.com/?nocache=1.
- Always backup your site before making crucial changes like editing your footer.php file. This will allow you to restore to a previous version if in any case your layout is broken or the site’s functionality is compromised.
- Some themes do not permit footer customizations or only allow certain specific customisations. You might need to add custom codes to make changes to these themes. In these cases, consider using a different WordPress theme or a customisation plugin.
- Footer is a global component and it should reflect your brand. One of the basic things to consider is ensuring the footer design aligns with your overall site branding. You may also choose to display award logos, stickers, subscription forms, social media links to make your footer interactive and useful to the site visitors.
- Regular updates are crucial for a site wide element like footer. Periodically review and update the footer content to keep it relevant. Links to privacy policy, terms of service, site info and contact improves user experience.
- Additionally, your footer should also support your SEO plan & efforts, specifically with internal linking. Adding important links to your footer ensures the pages are accessible from most pages and indicate key pages to search engines.
I hope this guide helped you edit your footer and update it with the latest information.
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