When choosing a WordPress theme, you might come across powered by WordPress on the footer link. For example, using a default WordPress theme will display the “Proudly Powered by WordPress” link on the footer area.
The message might vary depending on the theme developer. Some might add their company link as well. So you’ll see “Powered by WordPress. Theme made with love by ABC” — you get the idea.
In this post, I’m going to show you 3 different methods to remove powered by WordPress footer link from your website.
You might wonder why?
Why do I want to remove Powered by WordPress footer link at all?
Removing the WordPress footer link becoming extremely important when you’re working on business websites or building websites for your clients. Even when you’re just creating your personal website, removing the default footer link makes your website look professional — an easy win.
There are 3 common ways to remove the WordPress footer link. Let’s get started.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”How to remove Powered by WordPress footer link without plugins?” quote=”How to remove Powered by WordPress footer link without plugins?”]
1. Check Your Theme Customizer
Before you tried the other 2 methods, check your theme customizer. If you’re using a premium theme, usually there are options you could choose to make changes to the footer link without making changes to the code.
For example, I’m using the X theme on one of my websites and I could make the changes here. Simply go to the theme customizer and I’ll see the option to further optimize the theme in the Theme Options.
On the Theme Options, I could remove the Powered by WordPress footer link.
Go to Appearance > Customizer to access your theme customizer.
However, If you’re using a free theme, you’re out of luck. Most of the free theme developers don’t bother to include these options as part of the theme.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Make sure you’re using a child theme before making any changes to your theme files.” quote=”Make sure you’re using a child theme before making any changes to your theme files.”]
If the theme you’re using doesn’t provide the option to modify the footer links via the theme customizer, the best option you have is by editing your footer.php file.
Beware! Before making changes your footer.php, make sure you’re using a child theme. You should avoid making changes to your theme directly as you’ll lose the changes you made when you updated your theme.
Now that you’re using your child theme, open footer code. The common location for the footer file is /wp-content/themes/yourchildtheme/footer.php.
Some other themes might have a different folder and file structure. For example, for the default Twenty Seventeen WordPress theme, you’ll find the footer file in /wp-content/themes/twentyseventeen/template-parts/footer/site-info.php but the latest default Twenty Nineteen WordPress theme location is /wp-content/themes/twentynineteen/footer.php and the code would look like this.
Search for the text “Powered by” on the file, and remove the code from the file.
3. Add Global CSS
Hiding the Powered by WordPress footer link with CSS is probably the easiest workaround — yet, not recommended — due to the negative SEO impact. I’m surprised lots of people are still recommending this method as a quick way to hide the link.
This CSS method simply hides the text on your website. It’s the oldest tricks — also known as content cloaking — used by spammers to hide links and keywords from users while allowing search engines to crawl it — most search engines consider the hidden text to be spammy. Your site might get flagged and you might lose search engine rankings and traffic.
To use the CSS method, add this CSS to your child theme `style.css` file.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Hiding text on a website could have a negative SEO impact on your rankings.” quote=”Hiding text on a website could have a negative SEO impact on your rankings.”]
Final Thoughts
Removing the WordPress footer link might sound easy but it could be a daunting task for some. While there is a plugin for this, you don’t need to install a plugin for this simple task — installing too many plugins would slow down your site and make your site vulnerable to hacks.
I recommend you to avoid using the CSS method if possible. If the first method is not available in your theme and editing your footer.php seems like a scary task, drop us a comment below and we would be happy to help.
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This is very helpful! Thank you for sharing!
You’re most welcome, Jordan 🙂
This is super helpful! I really love coding 🙂
That’s great, Arya. Let me know if you ever have any problem.