How To – Add a Self Updating Copyright Notice to your Blog
New Year on your blog means there’s a number of jobs you must do, little things, such as set goals for the year, write new content & update your templates. A lot of these jobs can be automated, one such one is your copyright notice at the bottom of your blog.
I am not a lawyer, but the second you create content & unless you state otherwise, it is under copyright, so it’s a good idea to have something that states that the copyright is yours. Keeping the date upto date is one of those jobs that is easily forgotten, so to automate it you need to put the following line in your footer.php file in your template:-
© <?php bloginfo('name'); echo date('Y'); ?>
Nice and simple. A quick explanation for each of the elements in the code:-
- © - The HTML code for the copyright symbol: ©
- bloginfo(‘name’) - The wordpress template tag for displaying the name of the blog.
- date(‘Y’) - The current year
That’s it! You don’t have to update your footer copyright ever again.
If you want to include your year of formation in the copyright notice, put this in your footer (assuming your blog was formed in 2004).
© <?php bloginfo('name'); echo "2004-". date('Y'); ?>
Again, very simple.
This can be put in any of the template files in your blog, but traditionally it’s put in the footer. Any questions & I’ll do my best to answer them.
Tags: How To, php, wordpress | Comments: 7 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
Cheers for the reminder Rhys. Whilst my throwaway blog isn’t on WP (mainly cos it isn’t important enough to warrant the work!), your post was a timely nudge to sort this out
This reminds me that I’ve not yet change the Copyright date on my blog. Thanks for sharing this code.
Dude, you like… telepathically read my mind. From Canada to North Wales. I was wondering if this is possible and now here we are, with a smile on my face.
Awesome sauce.
I’ll buy you a pint of something nice one day. I’ll see your ass in another heated discussion at the ProBlogger forum
Thanks for the code to use on my WordPress Blog. I was actually typing in the current year in my code.
This makes it easier to use this code because I will never have to worry about updating the copyright year again and for my client blogs I design as well.
I needed this tonight and Googled “Rhys Copyright Notice”, thats how much mindshare you’ve gained in the “I need the code to put a copyright notice in my WordPress blog footer” space.
Hi Rhys
I found you because I’m trying to find out how to put a copyright notice into the footer of my Blogger blog. My question is – will your instructions work on Blogger, or do I have to do something else?
I would greatly appreciate it if you have time to reply.
Many thanks!
Livvy U
What file do i edit in a standard wordpress install to get this copyright at the bottom of my new blog ?
footer.php ? Or a template file ?
Thanks
Dave