Most of us working with WordPress themes will at one time or another want to do some manual changes to the footer. You might want to do it to remove the credits, or you might want to do it add a text or a link. This is how you can easily make manual changes to your WordPress footer and remove the WordPress credits from the footer.
Before you continue it can be wise to make a backup of your WordPress theme files, especially footer.php. You can do so easily connecting to your server via FTP. Once connected enter the wp-content/themes folder and then visit the folder of your theme. Download footer.php and keep it somewhere safe. After the backup has been made you are ready to start.
Edit your WordPress footer
There are two ways in which you can now edit your footer.
1) Edit footer.php in Notepad
Use the downloaded footer.php and make a copy of it. After making a plus backup open footer.php in an editor such as Notepad or PSPad. If you know some code you will easily understand what is going on and how you can make the desired changes. If you have no HTML/PHP knowledge scroll down towards the bottom and try to make some changes there. After making the changes upload footer.php from your computer and overwrite the version on the server. Reload your page afterwards and see the results made by your changes. If you get some white screen with error message upload the extra backup of footer.php without your former changes.
2) Edit footer.php in WordPress admin
If you want to edit your footer inside the WordPress admin tool go to Appearance and editor. There you should look for footer.php, make the changes you want to make and save the changes. If an error occurs upload your footer.php backup and try over again.
Remove credits from Twenty Twelve theme
If you want to remove the footer text from the Twenty Twelve WordPress theme open footer.php and remove the following text. Once you have removed the text press update file and the credits in the WordPress footer should be gone.
[stextbox id=”grey”]<a href=”<?php echo esc_url( __( ‘http://wordpress.org/’, ‘twentytwelve’ ) ); ?>” title=”<?php esc_attr_e( ‘Semantic Personal Publishing Platform’, ‘twentytwelve’ ); ?>”><?php printf( __( ‘Proudly powered by %s’, ‘twentytwelve’ ), ‘WordPress’ ); ?></a>[/stextbox]
For further instructions on how to manually edit in WordPress, add plugins and similar topics, read the other how to WordPress articles in our How to Blog Info.
