Including the new year value in the copyright notice at bottom of most web sites
The problem not including the current year in the copyright notice
Now that another new year is upon us, it is time to include that new year value in the copyright notice at the bottom of your websites. Website visitors expect to see the current year included in the copyright notice. If the current year is not mentioned, it just raises potential questions. Best to stop those potential questions from arising in the first place.
The quickest solution
The quickest way to do this is to hardcode the four digit year where you include the copyright notice. That way you do not have to worry about PHP code or the like. You just know it works.
The only problem with this approach is that you need to go to each of your website and spend some time updating each one at the start of each year. No big deal.
How to implement if your copyright notice is in the footer notice - A widget location
In my case, my copyright notice is in the footer notice (one of the footer widgets). Not all WordPress Themes have footer notices.
I just simply go to my WP dashboard, select appearance from the list on the left hand side, and then select widgets. I then select footer notice, change the view to Text, and update as follows, note that this particular website was started in 2017.
For example, say the new year is 2018
Copyright 2017 - 2018 <the domain name including dot com - All rights reserved.
I simply added the "- 2018" to this text.
I then click the Save button. I then visit one of the posts at that website to ensure that it is working as expected. And then repeat the exercise for my other websites.
For future years, simply replace "2018" with the correct year value.
For example, say the new year is 2019
Copyright 2017 - 2019 <the domain name including dot com - All rights reserved.
I simply added the "- 2019" to this text.
I then click the Save button. I then visit one of the posts at that website to ensure that it is working as expected. And then repeat the exercise for my other websites.
Other places to change this value
Some WordPress Themes allow the footer information to be changed inside of the "Appearance", then "Customize" option. You just have to go through each option here to see if this option is available.
Some WordPress Themes allow the footer information to be changed inside of the "Appearance", then the name of the WordPress Theme option. You just have to go through each option here to see if this option is available.
There are other options
Some WordPress Plugins can maintain the footer area of your website. I do not use them because I by design keep the number of my WordPress Plugins as low as possible for performance reasons and for maintenance reasons.
Another option is to change the underlying PHP code in the footer.php file for your WordPress theme. There are a few potential problems with this:
1) You have to know exactly what you are doing. It is possible to corrupt your footer.php file and the website becomes unusable. It is recommended become changing the footer.php file that you make a backup of it, so that you can revert to it if necessary.
2) If the WordPress Theme itself is updated, you have to reapply the changes to the footer.php file again, as it is possible that the WordPress Theme update changed this. You might just simply forget to update it again. You can use WordPress Theme Child functionally to help you with this.
In closing
I like helping people out and networking with people of a similar mind-set, so if you ever need help or just want to say hello, drop me a message below.
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Recent Comments
3
Very good stuff David.
Sam