Twenty Seventeen Footer "Proudly Powered By WordPress" Text

Many WP users are wondering how to edit Twenty Seventeen footer text that says, “Proudly Powered By WordPress“.

In 2014 theme, you can find it in footer.php, see the tutorial in this post. In WordPress 2017 theme the “exact” code this footer text is located inside twentyseventeen/template-parts/footer/site-info.php

If you use Twenty Ten theme, click here to see the tutorial,

I decided to post this because I have not seen any website or YouTube video that posted this. So who knows any Twenty Seventeen users need this.

Ways To Edit Your Twenty Seventeen Footer

Apparently there are ways to edit this text. And I think there are also pros and drawbacks with those methods.

1. Using CSS and add the copyright text. This might be the fastest way to change your Twenty Seventeen theme’s footer text, but this is inefficient, in my opinion. Because in the page source, even if you hide the original text, bots or robots still can read those text.

Pro: Fast and easy.
Drawback: the code is still there, just hidden and the appearance is replaced, not dynamic.

Twenty Seventeen One Page Parallax Scrolling Website Style

2. Using Static text. This said, you edit the footer text with a static text, which can be done, but again, when the year changes, you need to remember to edit it again. Many times, I visit website, and look at their footer, and still showing last year – somehow, it shows the website owner is not really serious to webmaster their website. In fact, they may forget to change it.

3. Using a plugin – I avoid using plugin if it is not necessary, this is something that we can invest a few minutes, and you can leave it in a long run, come on 😀

Using Static text? Avoid the “Year”.

However, if you decide to use the above methods by adding static texts avoid adding the year, just add the copyright text so if you forget to change the year, it won’t display the year anyway.

Best Method

The best method is using child theme and copy the parent theme’s file that has this footer text into your child theme and edit it there. Haven’t created a Twenty Seventeen Child Theme yet, check out my previous tutorial about it.

The reason why you should use child theme is because when one day the parent theme is updated you still have your customization (because you edit the child theme only).

Since Twenty Seventeen footer text is located in a separated site-info.php, I think it is safe enough to copy this into the child theme. It would be different if this was saved in its footer.php.

What you will need to follow this tutorial

1. Access to your web server. You can use cPanel log in or Use FileZilla or any FTP clients. In this tutorial, I will use cPanel, since FileZilla does not support copy and paste stuff.

I assume you can already access your cPanel, if not, please watch this video tutorial in the first 20 seconds, and you will be able to login. I use HostGator in the demo tutorial, the method will be the same if you use any other web hosts. Basically, type in yourdomain.com/cpanel, and enter your login info.

If you files in an addon domain, then you should look where your addon domain files are located.

If you use FTP client, you’ll need a code editor. (Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac will work). I am using Sublime Text editor.

2. The child theme of Twenty Seventeen.

Let’s get started.

1. Log in to your cPanel and go to your root directory of your website.

Because I installed the site with my main domain, and in a root directory so the files are inside public_html directory. Yours can be called, htdocs, or www, depends on the web host,

This is my public_html root directory look like — My public_html directory looks like

Pay attention on where your WordPress files are located.

2. Navigate to wp-content/themes/ directory.

Your wp-content folder contains Parent and Child Theme of Twenty Seventeen — Parent and Child Theme of Twenty Seventeen

You should see your child theme and parent theme Twenty Seventeen folders.

Our goal in this step is to copy the parent theme’s folder, so Twenty Seventeen’s folder to the child theme. Therefore, before clicking “Copy” icon on your menu bar, we should know the path of the child theme or the folder’s name, in this case. To have the path, you can choose following (choose (a) or (b));

a. For intermediate users, write the path to your text editor. If you use WordPress.org recommendation, the child theme folder should be, “twentyseventeen-child”.

b. For non-techies, right click the child theme and select “rename”. IMPORTANT: we do not actually rename the folder, only to copy the folder’s path. Copy the path and paste it in your text editor. Mine is called, “twentyseventeen-child”.

Getting the child theme's folder name — DO NOT click “Rename File” button

Copying the child theme's path by selecting all the text inside the box, right click, and copy — Select all the text inside the box, right click, copy

2. Then go to your parent theme. “twentyseventeen” folder.

Go inside that folder and find “template-parts” folder.

Template Parts Folder of Twenty Seventeen — Copy “template-parts”

Select “template-parts” folder and click “copy” icon on top left.

In the path dialog box, delete the “twentyseventeen” and paste in the copied child theme path from text editor which we’ve done in step 2 above. Click “copy file(s)” button.

Copy the file to the child theme's folder — Copy the file to the child theme

The folder should now also located in your child theme.

3. Navigate to your child theme by clicking the “up one level” button in your cPanel toolbar.

Delete all folders except "footer" folder — Delete all folders but “footer”

You should see “template-parts” folder. Double click it, and delete all folders inside EXCEPT “footer” folder. To do this, you can click on “Select All” radio button on the top menu of cPanel, all folders are now all selected. Then, press CMD key (Mac users) or CTRL key (Windows users) and while pressing CMD/CTRL key, select “footer” folder, to deselect that folder.

4. After, other folders are deleted, double click footer folder, delete the footer-widgets.php file by selecting it and click “delete” icon in cPanel. Now, the site-info.php should be the only file that is left.

Twenty Seventeen's site-info.php file — site-info.php

5. Open the site-info.php file by selecting it and click on “code editor” icon to edit.

This will open the cPanel code editor.

Twenty Seventeen Proudly Powered By WordPress code — The blue highlighted is the code

To delete the “proudly powered by WordPress” Twenty Seventeen footer text, you can edit or delete the whole code between <div=”div class=”site-info”> and </div><!–.site-info–>, then add or replace it with this code;

Copyright &copy; <?php echo date ('Y');?>
 <a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ); ?>" rel="home"><?php bloginfo( 'name' ); ?></a>

1 2	Copyright © <?php echo date ('Y');?> <a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ); ?>" rel="home"><?php bloginfo( 'name' ); ?></a>

In the YouTube video tutorial I show you how I actually left the text there and add my custom copyright text. We are proudly powered by WordPress overall 🙂

After done with editing click “save” button and see your front end website. You should see changes in your Twenty Seventeen footer area, clean your browser’s cache if you need to.