Copyright notices are a common feature on many website footers. As we crawl into 2016, you will need to remember to update your own copyright notice so that it isn’t out of date. John Chow reminded me how easy it is to make sure your copyright notice is updated automatically every year.
To display the current year on your website you need to use the_date function.
So to add a copyright notice to your footer we just need to add something like this to your footer.php template:
Copyright © Website Name
If you’re not used to editing PHP files, be very careful with this. You want to make sure you don’t put this in the middle of php code. If you’re not sure about this, read my beginner’s tutorial for PHP for WordPress and be sure to make any changes through ftp or cpanel. And save the original file as a back-up before making changes!
I’ve used this on my own website so take a look at the copyright date below to see it in action!