Would you like to remove the “WordPress site” link from the footer of your site? Recently, one of our readers asked if it was possible to remove copyrights from the footer in WordPress themes. In this article, we will show you how to remove a link for a WordPress site from the footer of your themes.
The default theme in WordPress uses the footer area to display the link “Website powered by WordPress”. Many theme developers replace copyrights with their own, so the link looks like “The site is powered by WordPress. Subject from company Z ”.
But if your site is designed for your business, it does not make sense to display these copyrights. Some might even think your site looks unprofessional.
Is It Legal To Remove WordPress Copyright From The Footer?
This question is asked very often. Yes, it is absolutely legal to remove links from your site.
WordPress is free and licensed under the GPL.
In short, this license gives you the freedom to use, modify, and even distribute WordPress on your own. Any WordPress theme or plugin that you download from the official WordPress.org directory, as well as many commercial WordPress themes are also released under this license.
Therefore, you have all the rights to do anything with your website, including removing links from the footer.
Let’s see how you can customize your footer in the WordPress theme and remove these links.
Remove Links “The Site Is Working On …”
There are many ways to remove copyright references from the footer, but we recommend the following 2 ways to do this.
Theme Settings Page
Most good authors know that their users will want the option to remove links from the footer. That is why they make the option available on the theme settings page.
Different topics have this option in different sections. But the first place to start searching for an option is inside the WordPress Theme Customizer (Appearance Customize) .
For example, Michael Hyatt’s GetNoticed theme offers users an option to customize the text in the footer, as well as disabling links in it.
Another place to look is the settings page for a specific topic or in the Widgets section.
The way with the code in Footer.php
If there is no option in your topic for hiding or editing copyrights in the footer from the WordPress admin panel, then the option remains to edit the code in footer.php.
This file is located on the path /wp-content/themes/yourtheme/footer.php
Just open this file in a text editor and look for a text like “The site is working for” and you will see the code that needs to be removed.
In the Twenty Sixteen default theme for WordPress, the code looks like this:
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<div class="site-info"> |
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<?php |
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/** |
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* Fires before the twentysixteen footer text for footer customization. |
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* |
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* @since Twenty Sixteen 1.0 |
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*/ |
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do_action( 'twentysixteen_credits' ); |
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?> |
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<span class="site-title"><a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ); ?>" rel="home"><?php bloginfo( 'name' ); ?></a></span> |
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<a href="<?php echo esc_url( __( 'https://wordpress.org/', 'twentysixteen' ) ); ?>"><?php printf( __( 'Proudly powered by %s', 'twentysixteen' ), 'WordPress' ); ?></a> |
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</div><!-- .site-info --> |
We can either completely remove this text, or customize it for yourself.
Avoid CSS With Any Cost.
Many WordPress article sites can show you a CSS method that uses display: none to hide unwanted footer links.
But by doing so you put your site at risk in terms of SEO. Google doesn’t like links that are hidden in display: none, because this technique is used by spammers to hide links from users, and at the same time show them to Google (in the hope of increasing in output).
Your site may flag, which in the end may lead to the loss of positions.
Therefore, whatever you do, do not use a CSS method like this:
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#site-info {display:none} |
It looks very simple, but for SEO it is very bad.
We strongly recommend using the two methods presented above. If you can’t do it yourself, it’s better to hire a professional to help you with your problem.
We hope that this article helped you remove the link “The site works on WordPress” from the footer of your site.
