The footer typically includes things like links to disclaimers, copyright and date information, privacy policy and terms of use, contact information, and a sitemap .

Footer helps improve user experience, overall design quality, increases visitor perception of your brand and maximizes engagement. If you don’t change your footer text to match your brand identity, it may look out of place or unprofessional to anyone visiting your site.

This guide covers the main methods you can use to change the footer in WordPress.

How to Change Footer in WordPress

For most WordPress themes, it is legal to modify the footer. However, if you have a third-party theme for your site, be sure to read their licensing agreements and documentation, as some restrict removal of copyright notices.

Before you start editing your site’s footer section, back up your site so you can restore it quickly in case you make mistakes.

You can change the footer in WordPress using the following methods:

• Theme Customizer
• Footer widgets
• Installing a plugin
• Changing the code in the footer.php file

How to Change Footer in WordPress via Theme Customizer

The theme customizer is part of every WordPress site and you can access it from the Appearance tab of your WordPress admin panel or dashboard. This WordPress feature allows you to make various changes to your site including changing fonts, colors, adding a logo, and even changing the header and footer sections.

1. To change the footer in WordPress using the theme customizer, login to your WordPress admin panel and select Appearance.

2. To select Personalize.

3. Go to the Setting Themes.

4. Then select Footer.

5. Replace the default text with your brand text.

How to Change the Footer in WordPress Using a Footer Widget

If your WordPress theme has a widget in the footer section, you can use the widget to add links, text, images, and disclaimers.

1. To edit footer with footer widget, go to Appearance and select widget.

2. In the Footer widget, you can add footer copy that reflects your brand.

How to Change Footer in WordPress Using a Plugin

There are thousands of WordPress plugins for your newly installed theme that you can use to extend your site’s functionality.

Among these plugins is a footer plugin that makes it easy to make minor or major changes to your WordPress site without any coding or other technical expertise.

If your WordPress theme doesn’t have a built-in footer plugin, you can use a third-party WordPress footer plugin like Remove Footer Credit.

1. To edit footer with Remove Footer Credit plugin, please install and activate the plugin. Go to the Tools in your WordPress admin panel and select Remove footer credit.

2. In the first text field, enter the text you want to remove, then add your footer copy in the second text field. To click To safeguard once you are done.

How to Change Footer in WordPress Using Footer.php Code

Footer.php is a WordPress template file that displays your theme’s footer area. Editing the footer.php code allows you to replace the default WordPress theme footer text with your custom footer copy.

Editing the footer.php code directly is not recommended, especially if you are unfamiliar with coding. Instead, you can use some best practices, such as creating a child theme, backing up your theme files, and commenting out code in the footer.php file.

To note: These instructions apply to the Twenty Seventeen WordPress theme.

1. To change the footer in WordPress using footer.php code, login to your WordPress admin panel and navigate to Appearance > Theme Editor.

2. Then choose the theme of the right panel.

3. Go theme files and find the theme footer (footer.php). If you have trouble finding it, use the CTRL+F keyboard shortcut.

4. Look for this PHP code:

get_template_part(‘template/footer/site parts’, ‘info’)

5. Then replace the PHP code with the following code and replace “Add text here” with your own footer text.

// get_template_part(‘template/footer/site parts’, ‘information’);
echo “add text here”;
?>

For example, if my footer copy is “Copyright 2020 helpdeskgeek.com | All rights reserved”, the code would be:

// get_template_part(‘template/footer/site parts’, ‘information’);
echo “Copyright 2020 helpdeskgeek.com | All rights reserved”;
?>

6. Change add text here with the content you want in your footer and select update file to complete the process.

How to Add Elements to WordPress Footer

If you want to connect your website to a third-party application, you can add code snippets to the WordPress footer.

For example, you can add social media buttons like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or YouTube to your site’s footer section. Just type in the social network script you want to add and then paste it into the footer section.

Otherwise, install and activate a plugin that allows you to add the script to the footer section. One of the plugins that helps with this is the Insert Headers and Footers plugin.

To do this, install and activate the Insert Headers and Footers plugin. Copy and paste the footer code into the Footer Scripts section.

To safeguard your changes before continuing.

You can also add an image to the footer through the customizer or by dragging and dropping the image widget into the footer section.

Quickly change your site’s footer

Changing the footer section of your WordPress site is one of the many theme enhancements you can make. This may take time if you have many sites, but it makes a difference in your site’s design, navigation, and user experience for your visitors.

Were you able to change the footer in WordPress on your site by following any of these steps? Share with us in a comment.