Not sure how to remove the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” copyright text from the footer of your WordPress website? This is one most common things which people like us suffer from. Whenever you install any free theme from the WordPress repository, it comes with this copyrighted text, and sometimes it gets hard to remove.
Generally, you’ll get issues like this on a free WordPress theme but when we talk about the premium themes, you’ll always get an option to edit them from the customizer panel.
So how to remove the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” in a free WordPress theme?
One friend came to me asking how can I remove this copyrighted text from the footer in a free version of the theme and I suggested him four ways to do it. Here in this guide, we’ll also talk about the four methods which I shared with him.
The four ways are as follow;
- Using Customizer Panel
- Editing Theme’s Footer File
- Using Free WordPress Plugin
- Custom CSS Code
So let’s get started…
Remove the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” from Footer
The wait is over.
Here I’m sharing the four easiest ways through which you can change the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” copyrighted text from the footer of your website. These methods are convenient and you can easily do it by yourself, even if you don’t have any technical or coding skills.
Using Customizer Panel
This is one of the most easiest and convenient ways through which you can remove the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” text from the footer section of your website.
Most of the free theme or the paid one comes with an option to change the text from the customizer panel of the website. To do so, you’ve to logged-in to your admin console and then go to “Appearance > Customize“.
Once you’re into the customizer panel, go to the ‘Layout Settings” or anything named as “Footer” section. I’m using the GeneratePress theme on my website, so it shows the option inside “Layout > Footer“.
Once you’re inside of your footer section in customizer, you’ll see an option to change the copyright text. Now you can change it to anything you want and also include links using the HTML tags.
In most cases, editing the copyrighted text is allowed only on the premium version of the themes. But some free themes including free ones from third-party websites like MyThemeShop also provide an option to edit the copyrighted text even in the free version of their themes.
Editing Theme’s Footer File
Another most common option through which you can remove the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” text is by editing the code of your theme’s footer file. This method works with all themes including the free ones.
This method is a little bit tricky because it may require coding skills. If you’re not sure how WordPress works and not aware of the basics of PHP, then it can be dangerous for your website to edit the footer.php file.
To be able to edit the code, log-in to your WP-admin and then go to “Appearance > Theme Editor” as shared in the image below.
Once you’re inside of your theme editor, select the theme you want to edit from the upper-right corner and then click on the file named “footer.php“.
Here you’ll find the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” text. Now you can change it to anything you like, but again I’ll recommend not to edit the code if you’re not experienced in coding.
Using Free WordPress Plugin
There are a few WordPress plugins available in the market which allows you to easily change the text written in the footer with something else you want.
These plugins are very easy to use, but some of these plugins consume a lot of server resources and if your website is not hosted on a good server, then it can reduce the loading speed of your website.
But if you still want to use this method, you’ll find a good plugin named “Remove Footer Credit” in the WordPress repository. It is a simple beginner’s friendly plugin having more than 90,000+ active installations in the WordPress repository.
This plugin is very easy to use and it provides the ability to remove any specific text from the footer of the website and majorly works with all WordPress themes you find on the internet.
Once the plugin is installed and activated on your website, visit “Tools > Remove Footer Credit” and you’ll find the option to replace specific text from the theme with the texts you want.
Once you clicked on the “Remove Footer Credit” option under the tools, it will open the options page where you’ll see two boxes. In the first box, you’ve to enter the text which you want to remove from your website, and in the next box, you’ve to add whatever you wanted to show instead of the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” option.
You can also use shortcodes and HTML tags here. Once you make the changes and saved them, you’ll instantly see changes in the frontend.
Custom CSS Code
The last method which we’re going to cover here is to remove the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” option using the custom CSS Code. This method only gonna hide the copyrighted text which is visible to us but it remains available on your website in the source code.
To hide the copyrighted text, you just have to copy and paste the code which we shared below in the “Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS“.
Using this code, we’re telling our website to hide a specific .site-info class using the display: none; option. This is the class that is mostly used by free themes or the paid one for showing the footer text.
But if this code won’t work for your website, I recommend you to open a support ticket and get it solved by the theme developer or to find the copyrighted class which is being used by your theme and replace them with the .site-info class we shared above.
How to Find the Class/ID of Copyrighted Text?
Finding the copyright class/ID is simple and if you’re not sure how to find the copyrighted class in your theme, then you can follow this method to get your CSS class or ID.
First of all, you’ve to visit your website and right-click on the copyrighted text, and then click on the “Inspect Element” option. It will open the developer console of your browser.
Once the developer console is opened, find the copyrighted class or ID just before the starting of the copyright section. In most cases, you’ll find the class/ID in the <div> section of HTML code.
For example,
I’m using the GeneratePress theme on my website and when I open the inspect element, it shows a class named “copyright-bar“. So I’ve to replace the .site-info CSS code we shared above with .copyright-bar (Make sure to use ‘.‘ before the starting of the class name).
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Still, got a few questions? Here we got you covered with a few FAQs which are mainly asked by our readers.
Can I Remove the Footer Credit in Free Theme?
You’ll get limitless features and capabilities in WordPress, but sometimes we don’t want to show the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” option on our website. In this case, you’re free to remove the footer credit from your WordPress website (Also, please ensure your theme allows it).
Does Removing “Proudly Powered by WordPress” Harms Me in Anyways?
Generally, it is not an issue to remove the footer credit of the theme and you’re free to remove the credits from any free theme you find on the WordPress repository.
But if you’re using a free theme from any third-party website, I’ll highly recommend you check their terms & policy page or contact their support.
Wrapping Up!
These are the four easiest ways to remove or change the ‘Proudly Powered by WordPress” option in the footer section of your website. These methods work well with free as well as paid themes – but using the paid themes will increase more functionalities and allows you to easily edit the text.
You can try any of the methods shared above to edit the footer copyrighted text – but in case, none of the methods works for you, then you can write to us at [email protected] and we’ll try our best to help you out.