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

(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)

Adding in your copyright notice is one of those things that everyone knows they’re supposed to “get done.”

And often doesn’t.

Most people do get it done… but once in a while, it slips by. If it slipped by, now is the time to get it handled. If you just haven’t thought of it, now is also a good time to get it handled.

Three basic ways to add a copyright notice to WordPress

1. Use a WordPress copyright plugin. There are several last I checked. One or more may (or may not) work exactly how you want.
2. Use copyright or footer support provided by your theme. Thesis makes it easy using the Hooks plugin. Just paste in the copyright code, you’re done.
3. Add the copyright manually to your WordPress theme files. We’ll take a look at adding a copyright notice directly to the Connections Reloaded theme in the following.

As you can see, there’s nothing difficult about it, it’s just a chore, has to be done.

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

Using the Connections Reloaded theme and proceeding stepwise:

1. Log in to the Dashboard as the administrator user
2. On the left sidebar, pull down the “Appearance” menu
3. Click “Appearance > Editor,” which will give a screen similar to the one shown below
4. 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.
5. Copy this text into the appropriate place in the footer:

   Copyright © 2012 Your Company Name — All Rights Reserved

   The “©” symbol is written using “©” and will render like this:

   Copyright © 2012 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.

6. 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.

Adding copyright to Connections Reloaded theme

That’s it!

Very easy really.

If you had any trouble with this, feel free to shoot me an email and explain what happened. I’ll see what I can do. Use the contact form.

Also, if this isn’t exactly what you needed, leave a comment below and I’ll see how best I can help you out.

• Originally published February 26, 2009.
• Updated May 8, 2010.