Every January 1st I take a quick look at my websites to make sure the year is current in the footer. This year, I thought it might be helpful to share those steps with you.

1. WordPress Footers and footer.php
2. Divi from Elegant Themes – edit in customizer
3. Update footer on you Teachable website
4. Automatic Footer Updates

WordPress Footers and footer.php

If you’re using WordPress, you’re probably already using a child theme, and most likely have a footer.php file already. I’ve posted some extra info below.

If you don’t have a child theme, do a quick search to find out how to update the copyright with the theme you’re using, and skip the rest of this post 🙂

Assuming you have a footer.php file, follow these steps.

• Go to Appearance > Editor > Select your child theme
• click on Footer.php file
• Look for the section that includes your copyright information
• update the year
• save your changes

Don’t have a footer.php or a child theme?

Creating a child theme is pretty easy, but it looks a bit scary, because it requires using file names like .php and going into the Cpanel to add files. It involves a bit more than just clicking “add new theme”, but it’s not that bad, either.

Divi from Elegant Themes – edit in customizer

If you’re using divi, you can make these changes easily within your theme (be sure to use a child theme). Follow these simple steps:

1. While logged into your dashboard, select Divi > Theme Customizer
   
2. Expand the Footer options
3. Open the Bottom Bar options
4. Scroll down to “edit footer credits” and update with your current year info
5. Click the Publish button and then you can close the theme customizer

Update footer on your Teachable website

☐ Go to Admin > Site > Custom Text
☐ Use Ctrl + F to use the “find” tool”
☐ Type in the word “Footer”, and you should jump to the footer section
☐ Edit the text in the right column to include © 2018
☐ Click “Save”

© will switch to the © (copyright sign)

It will display as © 2018 Your School Name, like this:

You can see the conversation in the Teachable Tribe Facebook Group here

Automatically updating, in case you forget

There’s some code you can use to make it automatically update, but I find that sometimes when we make simple updates to our footer info (like adding an affiliate link, or mentioning a new theme or plugin) that it’s easy to break the code & end up with a funny looking copyright line instead (oops)

The code looks like this:

&copy; 2018 – <?php echo date('Y'); ?> YourSite.com

And you can learn more from this post at wpbeginner.

Hope this helps… Happy New Year!

[social_share]