How to Remove a Footer Link from a WordPress Theme

Last Updated: June 3, 2021

Creators do awesome stuff, really. They spend hours and hours making a good and useful theme for one of the 875 million wordpress webpages out there. In most themes however, they include a link in the footer. It often goes like this: ‘Powered by Example Theme’ or ‘Designed by example .com’ . This is a nice way to get traffic back to their website or get their name out there.

Note that they have poured in months of hard work into the theme that you use, so removing a footer link should only be done if absolutely necessary. It may even be illegal in some cases, so read the theme license carefully. Once you have carefully considered whether you really need to remove it or not, proceed with this tutorial.

Steps

1
Take a backup. You can take a backup using a plugin like BackWPUp or in your web host’s control panel or via FTP. A good backup is key to being able to edit theme files without worries. If you mess up even one line of code, you will need to restore that file from your backup.
2
Choose your editor.
- Try not to choose the wordpress theme editor. It is generally not a good idea, since all changes are made to your website live and there is no undo option. So, if you do something wrong, you can't fix it, and you’re in a world of trouble.
  - A better thing to do would be to download the file to your PC and use a code editor on your pc. Once you are done, upload the file via FTP.
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3
Locate the file. Due to the abundance of wordpress themes out there, it is impossible to pinpoint where the footer link will be located. It is in a different place for each theme.
4
Check your theme files. Is there a file named credits.php? or class-credits.php ? Look for these hints. Look also in the footer.php file or in class-main-footer.php. You can also try searching your theme for the keyword credits. Once you have located the file, you can proceed to the next step.
5
Edit the file. Once you have located that elusive footer link, all that is left if either changing it or removing it. In the file, locate the footer link text. It will be wrapped in a lot of php code so be careful not to edit any of the code.
- Only edit the text variable or remove it completely. For example, if the code looks like what is shown in the picture, change or remove references to the theme maker.
6
Confirm your changes, and find out if all went well.
- Go to your website. Does it display correctly? Does it display at all? Is the footer link gone? If yes, congrats! You have successfully removed that annoying footer link. Give yourself a clap on the back for a job well done.
  - However, if you didn't succeed, restore your backup and try again.
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