How to Remove the Powered by WordPress Footer Links

/Do you want to remove the powered by WordPress footer links on your site? Recently one of our readers asked if it was possible to remove footer credits in WordPress themes. In this article, we will show you how to remove the powered by WordPress footer links in your themes.

The default WordPress themes use the footer area to display the “Proudly powered by WordPress” link. Many theme developers take this further and add their own credits, so it looks something like “Powered by WordPress. Theme by Company Z”.
But if you’re running a business website, then it doesn’t make any sense to display these credits. Some even think that it makes your website look unprofessional.

Is it legal to remove WordPress footer credit links?

We get this question a lot. Yes, it is absolutely legal to remove footer credits link on your WordPress site.
WordPress is free, and it is released under the GPL license.
In short, that license gives you the freedom to use, modify, and even redistribute WordPress. Any WordPress theme or plugin that you download from the official WordPress.org directory, and even most commercial WordPress themes are also released under the same license.
So you have full rights to do what you please with your website including removing the footer credit links.
Let’s take a look at how to customize your WordPress footer and remove these credit links.

Removing WordPress Powered by Links

There are many ways to remove the WordPress footer credit links, but we only recommend the following 2 ways of doing this.
The Theme Settings Page
Most good theme authors know that their users want to have the option to remove footer credit links. That’s why they make it available in their theme settings area.
Different themes have this setting available under different sections. But the first place to start looking is inside the WordPress theme customizer (Appearance » Customize).
For example, the GetNoticed theme by Michael Hyatt give users the option to customize the footer text as well as disable the credit links.

Other places that you can look are individual theme’s options pages or inside the Widgets section.
Footer.php Code Method
If your theme does not have the option to remove or modify footer credits from WordPress admin, then your only option is to edit the footer.php code.
You can find this file in your /wp-content/themes/yourtheme/footer.php
Simply open this file in a text editor and search for the footer credit text like “Powered by”, and it will show you the section that you need to remove.
In the default Twenty Sixteen theme for WordPress, the code looks like this:

<div class="site-info">
				<?php
					/**
					 * Fires before the twentysixteen footer text for footer customization.
					 *
					 * @since Twenty Sixteen 1.0
					 */
					do_action( 'twentysixteen_credits' );
				?>
				<span class="site-title"><a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ); ?>" rel="home"><?php bloginfo( 'name' ); ?></a></span>
				<a href="<?php echo esc_url( __( 'https://wordpress.org/', 'twentysixteen' ) ); ?>"><?php printf( __( 'Proudly powered by %s', 'twentysixteen' ), 'WordPress' ); ?></a>
			</div><!-- .site-info -->

You can either remove this text entirely or customize it to suit your needs.

Avoid the CSS Method at All Cost

Now some WordPress tutorial sites may show you a CSS method that uses display: none to hide the footer credit links.
However doing so will put your site’s SEO at risk. Google does not like hiding links with display:none because that’s a technique that spammers use to hide the links from users while still showing it to Google (in hopes of higher rankings).
Your site might get flagged, and it will cause you to lose your search engine rankings.
So whatever you do, do not use the CSS method like this:

#site-info {display:none}

While it looks simple, it’s not good for SEO.
We strongly recommend using the two methods that we showed above. If you cannot do either of those, then we recommend hiring a professional to help you remove your footer credit links or even consider changing your WordPress theme.
We hope this article helped you remove the powered by WordPress footer links.