Change the Genesis Theme Copyright Line in Footer for WordPress

Genesis Themes have a footer credit copyright line at the base of the page. This includes the copyright and Genesis framework link with a couple of standard WordPress default links.

genesis-footer-copyright

To change this, you can add a new function and filter into your functions.php of your Genesis child theme

Adding the Function

//Changing the Credits
function wpb_footer_creds_text () {
	echo '<div class="creds"><p>Copyright &copy;';
	echo date('Y');
	echo ' &middot; <a href="https://wpbeaches.com/">Neil Gee</a> - All Rights Are Reserved &middot; Powered by<a href="https://wpbeaches.com"> WP Beaches</a></p></div>';
}

 

Just change the above content to suit your needs. (You can easily use just one echo statement but just separate the PHP and HTML).  In the example above the first echo statement is adding the html mark up and copyright sign, the second echo is using PHP to echo the year which will change as the year does and the third is adding a couple of links and closing HTML mark-up.

As one echo line you can concatenate these and run as:

//Changing the Credits
function wpb_footer_creds_text () {
 echo '<div class="creds"><p>Copyright &copy; ' . date('Y') . ' &middot; <a href="https://wpbeaches.com/">Neil Gee</a> - All Rights Are Reserved &middot; Powered by<a href="https://wpbeaches.com"> WP Beaches</a></p></div>'; }

 

Name the function something similar to the above and then keep that name in the second half of the filter action declaration below – this example uses the function name wpb_footer_creds_text

Using return instead of echo

With filters it is better practice to return the value instead of echo‘ing it

//Changing the Credits
function wpb_footer_creds_text () {
 $copyright = '<div class="creds"><p>Copyright &copy; ' . date('Y') . ' &middot; <a href="https://wpbeaches.com/">Neil Gee</a> - All Rights Are Reserved &middot; Powered by<a href="https://wpbeaches.com"> WP Beaches</a></p></div>';
return $copyright
 }

So now we are creating a variable $copyright and assigning it the copyright text and then returning it back ready for the filter.

Adding the Filter

add_filter( 'genesis_footer_creds_text', 'wpb_footer_creds_text' );

Add the filter below the function, (you can add it above if that makes more sense to you and above is actually more WordPress standard). Giving us the final piece of code:

//Changing the Credits
function wpb_footer_creds_text () {
 $copyright = '<div class="creds"><p>Copyright &copy; ' . date('Y') . ' &middot; <a href="https://wpbeaches.com/">Neil Gee</a> - All Rights Are Reserved &middot; Powered by<a href="https://wpbeaches.com"> WP Beaches</a></p></div>';
return $copyright
 }
add_filter( 'genesis_footer_creds_text', 'wpb_footer_creds_text' );

 

There you will have your new Copyright/Credit line

genesis-credits-line

Remove The Genesis Theme Copyright Line

To remove the credit copyright line altogether, you can just return nothing by adding to your functions.php:

function wpb_footer_creds_text () {
	$copyright = '';
        return $copyright;
}
add_filter( 'genesis_footer_creds_text', 'wpb_footer_creds_text' );

Also you may want to check out how to in Genesis add footer content via a widget instead.

8 Comments

  1. happymod on December 14, 2019 at 4:39 pm

    Working for me I have changed the footer of my site

  2. James on May 22, 2019 at 12:32 am

    Works for me and I change footer credits on my site as well.

  3. Anwer Ashif on April 18, 2018 at 3:16 pm

    Is there any way to reposition only the Genesis Footer Credits (genesis_footer_creds_text) after Site Footer (genesis_after_footer)? or How do I return Genesis shortcode (ex. [footer_copyright], [footer_childtheme_link], [footer_genesis_link], [footer_studiopress_link] ).

  4. Muriel from MOMof4 on November 12, 2017 at 11:01 pm

    Thank you very much! I have never worked with Genesis before and I could not find the footer copyright thing. However, your post was so well written, I didn’t read it until the end, I just found the stuff in the functions folder.
    I am very thankful!

  5. Kris on April 9, 2017 at 8:15 am

    Btw, fyi I just tried using return and got error 500 too :)

  6. Prodigi on December 24, 2016 at 4:59 am

    Hello Neil, thank you so much for this tutorial I’m happy now find this website, I can modification my theme
    once again thanks a lot god bless to you and wish you all the best

  7. Mike Hemberger on September 15, 2016 at 7:32 pm

    I use a similar version of this in my starter theme, but you should really be using `return` instead of `echo` since you’re in a filter, not an action hook. Cheers ;)

    • Neil Gowran on September 15, 2016 at 9:25 pm

      Good point! – updated now in post

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