DIY WordPress: How To Add A Copyright Notice To A WordPress Theme

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Adding a copyright notice to a WordPress theme is very easy, but it does require a bit of care: you will have to add some text to the raw files that comprise your theme. Adding this text is easy, but it’s also easy to make a mistake, so let’s be careful care.

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Proceeding stepwise:

Log in to the Dashboard as the administrator user
On the left sidebar, pull down the “Appearance” menu
Click “Appearance > Editor,” which will give a screen similar to the one shown below
You will see the source code of the theme displayed, probably the “style.css” file. You want to click on the “footer.php” link in the right sidebar. This will allow you to edit the text of the file containing the theme’s footer, all the text displayed at the bottom of the page.
Copy this text into the appropriate place in the footer:
```
Copyright &copy; 2009 Your Company Name — All Rights Reserved
```
The “©” symbol is written using “©” and will render like this:
```
Copyright © 2009 Your Company Name — All Rights Reserved
```
You might have to put your thinking cap on here, and figure out where it’s going to go among all the HTML and PHP elements. If you’ve come this far, you need to learn a little bit of HTML and PHP anyway. You don’t need much.

NOTE: If the theme’s author has “protected” the theme’s footer and links using encrypted code, you should contact consider using a different theme. You won’t be able to add the copyright notice within the footer, and there may be other, more nefarious code within the theme.
Save your work, and check how it looks. You may have to adjust once or twice to position it correctly.

Here’s a screenshot showing the left sidebar, and the highlighted position of the copyright text placed into the footer.

wordpress_add_copyright1