Remove “WordPress is proudly powered by.”

You’ve undoubtedly seen that notice in the footer of your site if you’ve installed a free theme from the WordPress theme directory. It’ll surely be present if you’re using the default theme. It may have been replaced by a notice informing visitors who the theme developer is, depending on your theme.

But what if you don’t want a WordPress or theme developer advertisement on your site? What if you’d rather use the footer to provide information about your site, business, and brand?

The good news is that getting rid of the “powered by WordPress” notice is simple. The specific method you use will depend on how the developer added it to the theme, but with a little detective effort, you should be able to figure it out and get rid of the notice.

So I’ll show you how to get rid of the “powered by WordPress” statement and link in this post. I’ll also explain why you might want to remove it – or why you might not.

Why You Might Want to Remove the “Powered By WordPress” Message

When I Don’t Want to Remove “Powered By WordPress” Is It Okay If I Remove the Message?
How to Avoid Getting Rid of “Powered By WordPress”
Using a Plugin, Remove “Powered by WordPress”
How Do I Get Rid of “Powered By WordPress”? Using Your Own Code to Replace “Powered by WordPress”
Do you want to get rid of the *Powered by WordPress* credits from your footer?
✏️❌ This post will show you how to do it in three different ways!
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Why You Might Want to Remove the “Powered By WordPress” Message

There are several reasons why you might want to delete the communication.

Perhaps you’ve built a unique design for your site that doesn’t seem like standard WordPress, and you don’t want to draw attention to the CMS you’re using. Maybe you don’t want to inform everyone you’re using WordPress because it makes it easier for hackers to guess the structure of your file system. (There are numerous ways to identify if a site is based on WordPress, so this won’t fully conceal the truth, but it might.)

If you’ve developed a site for a customer using a third-party theme, you might wish to replace it with a link to your own site.

You can remove the “powered by” statement if one of these applies to you or if you simply don’t like it.

When You Don’t Want “Powered By WordPress” to Go Away?

Personally, I’m a big admirer of WordPress, and I’m glad that others are aware of this.

I’ve built dozens of websites with WordPress for myself and others. and am thankful for the existence of a free website platform that provides me with nearly limitless freedom and works under a license that allows me to create the sites I need without restriction.

I’m pleased to preserve the “powered by WordPress” message on client sites as well (and no client has asked for it to be removed yet). However, I occasionally add to the message: after all, I want visitors to know who created the theme and be able to visit my website.
Remove “Powered by WordPress” as soon as possible:
Many WordPress themes have the iconic “powered by WordPress” statement in the footer area. Use the Remove Footer Credit plugin to swiftly delete it (or simply edit it with your custom code). It allows you to remove specified text or HTML from your footer.

Is It Allowed for Me to Remove the Message?
People are sometimes hesitant to remove the “powered by” message because they believe it is essential on their site.

It’s easy to see it in all of the basic themes and assume it’s required; that it’s a kind of fee for using WordPress.

This is not the case. WordPress is released under the GNU General Public License, which allows you to change and customize the software in any way you like. The “powered by WordPress” message, as well as any other ties to the WordPress site, such as the dashboard widgets in the admin screens, must be removed.

So, in a nutshell, yes, you are permitted to delete the communication.

How Not to Remove “Powered By WordPress”

Let’s start by identifying a way you may have come across that you should not use before I teach you how to remove the “powered by WordPress” message.

Using CSS, this method hides the footer credits or the colophon.

You may have read guidelines advising you to simply use display:none in the customizer or in your theme for the relevant element. However, there is a solid reason you shouldn’t do this: it doesn’t truly remove the credit from your site. It simply hides it from users of standard web browsers.

Instead of hiding the message from search engines, it informs them that you are adding links to your site and then hiding them. This is questionable behavior, and it is carried out by unethical SEO professionals. It may have a negative impact on your search engine rankings.

It also doesn’t hide the message from persons with visual impairments who use screen readers. This means they aren’t having the same experience with your site as other visitors. This is inconvenient for those with disabilities.

As a result, don’t hide the footer credit with CSS. I won’t even show you how to do it because you don’t need to know.

Using a Plugin, Remove “Powered by WordPress”
Using a plugin is the quickest and easiest approach to remove the “powered by WordPress” message. Let’s have a look at the alternatives.

Powered by WordPress should be removed.
The Remove Powered by WordPress plugin does exactly what it says on the tin: it gets rid of the message.

When you activate the plugin, it adds a checkbox to the Customizer’s Theme Options screen, allowing you to toggle the “powered by WordPress” message on and off.

‘Powered by WordPress’ removed from the footer “powered by WordPress” removed from the Twenty Nineteen theme’s footer However, this only removes the default “powered by WordPress” text, not any custom messages linking to the theme developer, as shown below in a site using the Storefront theme for WooCommerce.

‘Powered by WordPress’ does not appear in the Storefront theme “powered by WordPress” does not appear in the Storefront theme
We’ll need to utilize a plugin that allows us to target certain text rather than the default credits to get rid of this.

Footer Credit should be removed.
You can remove certain text or HTML from your footer with the Remove Footer Credit plugin. You can tell the plugin to target a custom credit in the footer if your theme developer has added one.

To reach the settings panel, click to Tools > Remove Footer Credit after the plugin has been activated.

Remove the Footer Credits panel from the settings.
You’ll need to include not only the text in the credit, but also the HTML in order for the plugin to work. To get this, open your browser to any page on your site and look at the code (the way you do this varies across browsers).

I’m using Chrome, and I’ve found a link and text for the Storefront theme’s footer credit:

The HTML added by the Storefront theme’s credit
Copy and paste the complete piece of HTML, including the URL, into the first field of the Remove Footer Credit settings screen:

In the Remove Footer Credit options, you can add HTML.
Go back to your site and refresh the screen after scrolling down and clicking the Save button. You’ll notice that the credit in the footer has vanished:

The Storefront theme’s footer credit has been removed.
You can also fill up the second field with your own alternative text. This can include links and other HTML, though I wouldn’t go crazy with it!

How to Remove “Powered By WordPress” Manually
If you’re comfortable modifying the code in your WordPress theme yourself, removing the credit by editing the code in your theme or in a child theme is more efficient.

If you’re working with a custom theme, go ahead and make changes to it. You’ll need to build a WordPress child theme if you’re using a third-party theme that you downloaded from the theme directory or purchased from a theme vendor.

Let’s look at how you go about doing that.

Recognizing the Code
You must first discover the code that causes the notice to appear before you can remove it. This will differ depending on your theme.

Let’s look at a couple of scenarios.

In the default Twenty Nineteen theme, the code for the area in the footer (the colophon) that displays the link is as follows:

id=”colophon” class=”site-footer”>footer id=”colophon” class=”site-footer”>

?php get template part(‘template-parts/footer/footer’, ‘widgets’);?php get template part(‘template-parts/footer/footer’, ‘widgets’);?php get template part(‘template-part

div class=”site-info”> div class=”site-info”> div class=”site-info”>
<?php get bloginfo(‘name’);?> $blog info = get bloginfo(‘name’);
if (! empty($blog info)):?php
a class=””>a class=””> “href=”?php echo esc url(home url(‘/’));?> site-name” href=”?php echo esc url(home url(‘/’));?>
rel=”home”> “> >
?php bloginfo(‘name’);?a>?php bloginfo(‘name’);?php bloginfo(‘name’);?php bloginfo(‘name’
,
?php endif;?>?php endif;?php endif;?php endif;
a href=a href=a href=a hre “?php echo esc url( (‘https://wordpress.org/’, ‘twentynine’));?php echo esc url( (‘https://wordpress.org/’, ‘twentynine’));?php echo esc url( (‘https://wordpress
imprint” class=”imprint” “> >
?php /* translators: percent s: WordPress. */ printf( (‘Proudly powered by percent s.’, ‘twentynineteen’), ‘WordPress’);?> /a>?php /* translators: percent s: WordPress. */ printf( (‘Proudly powered by percent s.’, ‘twentynineteen’), ‘WordPress

(function exists(‘the privacy policy link’)) if (function exists(‘the privacy policy link’)) if (function exists(‘the privacy policy ‘span role=”separator” aria-hidden=”true”>/span>’);?> the privacy policy link(“,’span role=”separator” aria-hidden=”true”>/span>’);?> the privacy policy link(“,’span role=”separator” aria-hidden=”true

?php if (has nav menu(‘footer’)):?> nav class=”footer-navigation” aria-label=”?php esc attr e(‘Footer Menu’, ‘twentynineteen’);?>”> nav class=”footer-navigation” aria-label=”?php esc attr e(‘Footer Menu’,

<?php
wp nav menu(array(‘theme location’ =>’footer,’menu class’ =>’footer-menu,’depth’ => 1, ) );?>

/nav>!—.footer-navigation —>!—.footer-navigation —>!—.footer-navigation —>

?php endif;?>?php endif;?php endif;?php endif;

/div>!—.site-info —>!—.site-info —>!—.site-info —>!—.site-info

!— #colophon —>/footer>!— #colophon —>/footer>!— #colophon —>/footer
There’s a lot of code in that. It generates a colophon that looks something like this:

In the year twenty-nine, the footer
The two widgets I put to the footer widget section, as well as a colophon with the site name and the “powered by WordPress” statement, are all included in this footer.

This is the code that displays the message:

a href=a href=a href=a hre “?php echo esc url( (‘https://wordpress.org/’, ‘twentynine’));?php echo esc url( (‘https://wordpress.org/’, ‘twentynine’));?php echo esc url( (‘https://wordpress

imprint” class=”imprint” “> >
printf( (‘Proudly powered by percent s.’, ‘twentynineteen’), ‘WordPress’);?php /* translators: percent s: WordPress. */ printf( (‘Proudly powered by percent s.’, ‘twentynineteen’), ‘WordPress’);?>
</a>
We’d have to explicitly alter the code if we wanted to override this, which isn’t a smart idea. If you make changes to the footer.php file in the theme and then update it, the new version of the footer file will overwrite your changes.

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The Twenty Nineteen theme (and other themes that code it straight into the footer) allows you to alter or remove this message by creating a child theme, duplicating the footer.php file from the parent theme (Twenty Nineteen), and editing it.

I’ll teach you how to accomplish it momentarily, but first, let’s have a look at a theme that does things a little differently.

The Storefront theme, which is similarly free and geared for WooCommerce retailers, has a feature that displays the footer credit.

The following is the colophon from Storefront’s footer.php file:

footer id=”colophon” class=”site-footer” role=”contentinfo”> footer id=”colophon” class=”site-footer” role=”contentinfo”>

div class=”col-full”> div class=”col-full”> div class=”col-full”

?php /** * Storefront footer action functions * * @hooked storefront footer widgets – 10 * @hooked storefront credit – 20 */ do action(‘storefront footer’);?> do action(‘storefront footer’);?>

/div>!—.col-full —>!—.col-full —>!—.col-full —>!—.col-

!— #colophon —>!— #footer>!— #colophon —>!— #colophon —>!— #
This does not include any code that generates the “powered by WordPress” message. When you visit a Storefront-powered site, though, you’ll notice a message that says the site is powered by Storefront and WooCommerce rather than WordPress:

Storefront’s generated footer
So, where does that code originate?

The clue is in the footer.php file, which lists the storefront footer widgets and storefront credit functions that are connected to the storefront footer action. storefront credit is the function that generates that code.

It’s accessed by the storefront footer hook, which is enabled with the following code:

‘storefront footer’; do action(‘storefront footer’);
We can locate the storefront credit function being attached to that action hook in the storefront-template-hooks.php file if we dig deeper into the theme files. Here’s the gist of it:

add action(‘storefront footer’,’storefront credit’, 20); add action(‘storefront footer’,’storefront credit’, 20);
The function is located in a different file, storefront-template-functions.php, which we’ll discuss later.

So now we have two options for adding the “powered by WordPress” statement to the footer: either coding it into the footer file or using a function and a hook. Let’s go over the process of overriding it now.

Making a Children’s Theme
You’ll need to establish a child theme for your code before you start with either of these techniques.

Create a new folder in your wp-content folder and name it twentynineteen child or storefront child, for example.

To make two files in your child theme, follow the guidelines in the WordPress codex: style.css and functions.php.

After that, you’ll need to tweak the child theme before activating it. Because it’s a child theme, the parent theme’s template files will be utilized to display your site unless the child theme has a file with the same name. If this is the case, it will override the parent theme’s comparable file. You can also override functions in the parent theme by writing functions in your child theme.

Taking Credit Out of the Footer File
Let’s start with how to make the adjustment when the message is explicitly coded into footer.php.

The footer.php file can be found in the parent theme (e.g. Twenty Nineteen). Make a copy of that in your child theme’s footer.php file, which is also known as footer.php.

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Now, in your child theme, open the footer.php file (not in your parent theme: this is very important).

Locate the code that causes the “powered by WordPress” message to appear. In the instance of Twenty-Nineteen, it appears to be as follows:

a href=a href=a href=a hre “?php echo esc url( (‘https://wordpress.org/’, ‘twentynine’));?php echo esc url( (‘https://wordpress.org/’, ‘twentynine’));?php echo esc url( (‘https://wordpress

imprint” class=”imprint” “> >
printf( (‘Proudly powered by percent s.’, ‘twentynineteen’), ‘WordPress’);?php /* translators: percent s: WordPress. */ printf( (‘Proudly powered by percent s.’, ‘twentynineteen’), ‘WordPress’);?>
</a>
All you have to do to remove the credit is remove the code from your footer.php file. After that, save it. You’ll notice that the “powered by WordPress” message has vanished when you refresh your screen.

The “powered by WordPress” footer from Twenty Nineteen has been deleted.
How Do I Get Rid of “Powered By WordPress”? Making Use of a Function
It’s a little different removing the credit from a theme that inserts it via a function rather than directly to the footer file.

Instead of modifying the footer.php file in your child theme, you should build a function in your child theme’s functions file that eliminates the credit.

Follow the steps below.

Open the functions.php file in your child theme. This file is already present in your child theme because it is where the parent theme’s stylesheet is enqueued.

The Twenty Nineteen footer with “powered by WordPress” removedstorefront credit is the function in the Storefront theme that adds the footer credit. It’s attached to the action hook storefront footer. This means that we must use the remove action() function to unhook the storefront credit function from the action hook in order to remove all of its content.

Add the following to the functions file of your child theme:

remove action(‘storefront footer’,’storefront credit’); add action(‘wp head’,’remove storefront credit’, 20); remove action(‘storefront footer’,’storefront credit’);
Otherwise, the function you create will not fire since it is not connected to another action. It’s wp head in this scenario. It’s critical to include the priority as the third parameter for add action(), and to make this the same as in the initial add action() instance from the storefront-template-hooks.php file.

When you navigate to your site now, you’ll notice that the footer credit has vanished:

With no attribution given, the Storefront theme was created.
The entire credit, including the copyright information, has vanished. If you want to be more particular and only target the Storefront link, you’ll need to add your own code to the method. We’ll get to that later.

Replacing “Powered By WordPress” with Your Own Code
You could replace the footer credit with your own code if you don’t want to remove it.

Depending on the manner your theme uses to add the credit, you’ll have to do it in a different way. Let’s start with how to accomplish it with a theme that adds it to the footer file directly.

Using the Footer File to Add Your Own Credit
Instead of deleting the code for the “powered by WordPress” message in the new footer.php file you established in your child theme, you replace it with your own.

I’m going to add a link to the Kinsta website to it. The new version of the code is as follows:

a href=a href=a href=a hre “?php echo esc url( (‘https://kinsta.com//’, ‘kinsta’));?php echo esc url( (‘https://kinsta.com//’, ‘kinsta’));?php echo esc url( (‘https

imprint” class=”imprint” “> >
printf( (‘Hosted by percent s.’, ‘kinsta’), ‘Kinsta’);?php /* translators: percent s: WordPress. */ printf( (‘Hosted by percent s.’, ‘kinsta’), ‘Kinsta’);?>
</a>
Now save your file and visit your website again. You’ll notice that the message “powered by WordPress” has changed.

The footer for the year 2019 has been updated with fresh content.
Using a Function to Add Your Own Credit
The footer credits are added via a function in the Storefront theme, which we already unhooked.

But what if you want to make changes to it?

Let’s look in the Storefront files for the function’s code. storefront credit is the function we’re looking for ().

(Note: If you have unhooked the function using the above methods, remove the code that did so.)

That function can be found in the inc folder of the theme’s storefront template functions.php file. Here’s how it works:

If (! function exists(‘storefront credit’) is true, then {

* @since 1.0.0 * @return void */ /** * Display the theme credit * * @since 1.0.0 * @return void */ /** * Display the theme credit * * @since 1.0.0 * @

?> storefront credit() function

div class=”site-info”> div class=”site-info”> div class=”site-info”>
<?php esc html(apply filters(‘storefront copyright text’, $content = “. get bloginfo(‘name’).”. date(‘Y’)));?>
?php if (apply filters(‘storefront credit link’, true))?>?php if (apply filters(‘storefront credit link’, true))?>?php if (apply filters(‘storefront credit link’, true))?>

?php if (apply filters(‘storefront privacy policy link’, true) && function exists(‘the privacy policy link’)) && function exists(‘the privacy policy link’)) ‘span role=”separator” aria-hidden=”true”>/span>’);?> the privacy policy link(“,’span role=”separator” aria-hidden=”true”>/span>’);?> the privacy policy link(“,’span role=”separator” aria-hidden=”true

?php echo ‘a href=”https://kinsta.com/” target=” blank”>a href=”https://kinsta.com/”>a href=”https://kinsta.com/”>a href=” title=”‘. esc attr (‘Kinsta hosting’, ‘kinsta’). ‘” rel=”author”> title=”‘. esc attr (‘Kinsta hosting’, ‘kinsta’). ‘” rel=”author”> esc html (‘Hosted by Kinsta’, ‘kinsta’) esc html (‘Hosted by Kinsta’, ‘kinsta’) esc html (‘Hosted by Kinsta’, ‘kinsta ‘</a> . ‘;?>

?php?>?php?>?php?>?php?>

/div>!—.site-info —>!—.site-info —>!—.site-info —>!—.site-info

?php?php?php?php?php?php?php?
Because it’s wrapped in a check to verify if a function with the same name already exists, that function is pluggable. This means that if we write a new function with the same name in our child theme, it will overwrite this version of the function.

Begin by removing the remove action() method you previously added to your child theme’s functions file (if you have done that).

A new version of the storefront credits() method must now be added. The line that begins?php echo “a href=”https://woocommerce.com” is the component of the function that we want to change.

The simplest method to achieve this is to copy the original Storefront function and then edit it in your functions file. I’m going to update the Storefront credit with one that refers to Kinsta.

Here’s what I do:

div class=”site-info”>function storefront credit()?>

<?php esc html(apply filters(‘storefront copyright text’, $content = “. get bloginfo(‘name’).”. date(‘Y’)));?>

?php if (apply filters(‘storefront credit link’, true))?>?php if (apply filters(‘storefront credit link’, true))?php if (apply filters(‘storefront_

br />br />br />br />

<?php

apply filters(‘storefront privacy policy link’, true) && function exists(‘the privacy policy link’) if (apply filters(‘storefront privacy policy link’, true) && function exists(‘the privacy policy link’)) ‘span role=”separator” aria-hidden=”true”>/span>’);?> the privacy policy link(“,’span role=”separator” aria-hidden=”true”>/span>’);?> the privacy policy link(“,’span role=”separator” aria-hidden=”true

?php echo ‘a href=’a href=’a href=’a href=’a “https://woocommerce.com/wp-admin/wp-admin/

esc attr (‘WooCommerce – The Best eCommerce Platform for WordPress’,’storefront’). ‘” rel=”author” target=” blank” title=”‘. esc attr (‘WooCommerce – The Best eCommerce Platform for WordPress’,’storefront’). ‘” “> >

esc html (‘Built with Storefront & WooCommerce’,’storefront’) esc html (‘Built with Storefront & WooCommerce’,’storefront’) esc html (‘Built with Storefront & WooCommerce ‘</a> . ‘;?>

?php?>?php?>?php?>?php?>

/div>!—.site-info —>!—.site-info —>!—.site-info —>!—.site-info

<?php \s}
Save your functions file and visit your site again. The credit message has been updated as follows:

Storefront’s new version of the footer credit

Summary

The “driven By WordPress” message informs visitors that your website is powered by WordPress and that you’re proud of it. However, you may choose to delete the mail for a variety of reasons, including marketing or privacy.

The removal of the message is allowed, and it can be done in a variety of methods. You can do that with a plugin, or by editing the code in your theme or using a child theme. It’s up to you which method you use, but either method you use, the guide above will assist you.

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