Are you in the process of creating your own WordPress site? With many WordPress themes (such as the Twenty Sixteen) the site info “Proudly powered by WordPress” or “Powered by WordPress” placed. You can easily remove this link (it takes your users to wordpress.org) in just a few steps.
Why should I even remove the “Proudly presented by WordPress” info?
It's simple: blackhats use this little piece of information to use the search engine to locate a large number of blogs and add them to to flood spam comments. So-called search operators, for example, make it very easy to identify websites that Powered by WordPress or Pridely proudly powered by WordPress did not remove and additionally contained a certain word in the title (e.g. Travel):
"stolz präsentiert von wordpress" intitle:Travel"powered by wordpress" intitle:TravelAfter entering these search operators, the Google search results page returns all websites where Powered by WordPress can still be found. And that's a lot.
May I remove “Proudly presented by WordPress”?
Yes. This is not a copyright, but a thank you inserted by WordPress itself. The same applies to the English version Powered by WordPress.
Three methods to remove Powered by WordPress
- Method: Classic method via the CSS file
- Method: Edit footer.php file
- Method: Use a plugin
1. Method: Edit CSS file
First of all: This method does not work with all themes. To do this, go to the customizer area in WordPress and add the following code to “additional CSS”:
.site-info {display:none;}This hides the site info in the footer. Warning: it is still visible to the search engine. This is also the reason why this method is only a purely cosmetic removal of the hint. The reference is still visible in the source text and will therefore continue to be indexed by Google.
2. Method: Edit footer.php file
To completely remove the notice, you need to edit the footer.php file. Go to the Editor (In the menu: Design / Editor) and switch to the Theme file footer.php. Here you will find (relatively high up) the following code:
<div class="site-info" style="float:left">
<?php do_action( 'twentytwelve_credits' ); ?>
<a href="<?php echo esc_url( __( 'http://wordpress.org/', 'twentytwelve' ) ); ?>" title="<?php esc_attr_e( 'Semantic Personal Publishing Platform', 'twentytwelve' ); ?>"><?php printf( __( 'Proudly powered by %s', 'twentytwelve' ), 'WordPress' ); ?></a>
</div><!– .site-info –>You can completely remove this block. Attention: Please make sure that you really only remove this code and no other characters, otherwise display errors may occur. In principle, it is advisable to create a backup of the website before making any changes to your site.
3. Method: Use plugin
If you use the Twenty Seventeen theme, you can also simply use a plugin to remove the notice. Install the free plugin for this Advanced Twenty Seventeen. After the installation you have more options in the Customizer (Design / Customizer). Under Custom Copyright you will find the note, which you can now replace with your own link:
Stolz präsentiert von <a href="https://elina-leitz.de">Elina-Leitz.de</a>I hope the post has helped you a little. If you know other options or have questions about the individual methods, please write me a comment. You can find more tips about WordPress in my new section of the Tips and tricks. In my article Rollback of broken WordPress plugin For example, I'll show you what to do if updating a plugin crashes your site.
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That only seems to work for the Twenty-Twenty theme. What about the Twenty-Seventeen Theme?
Hello Kristian, the easiest way is to also go to the footer.php of your topic (Design -> Editor -> select Footer.php) and comment out line 38 there.
This is very easy to do by entering in front of it
/**and after that one*/insert so that the line looks like this:/** get_template_part( 'template-parts/footer/site', 'info' ); */hi lina,
Thank you for your answer! The only thing that confused me was that I didn't find anything in footer.php that was in the article. Something has probably changed in the meantime. Anyway, it's solved now!
I followed your instructions. Precisely ! I now have my own text in there and even added a link. Thanks so much ! That was easier than I thought! Greetings Karl
Thank you Karl for your feedback. I am glad that the article was of help to you. LG Lin
Hi Lina, I was able to delete the footer, even though the information I left was misaligned, I also couldn't add my own text. Anyway, the important thing was to get the phrase out for the blackhat to find. Spam went down, but a little, not all. Is it normal or does it need to go down over time?
Hello Guitarriego, thank you for your comment. Glad the article helped you and you were able to remove the sentence. For example, you can also try working with a blacklist of words/email addresses/URLs/IP addresses to reduce unwanted spam comments. LG Lin
Hello Lina! I didn't do that, I'll figure out how to blacklist the keywords. That should solve it since there are less than 10. It can be clarified that with the elimination of the footprint, spam has dropped by about 50%. Best regards!
Hello Tobi,
Thanks for the helpful post on how to hide the "powered by WordPress" site info in the footer. Your explanations are very useful for those building their own WordPress site. Knowing how to remove this info is important to prevent potential spam comments. Keep up the good work with the WordPress tips and tricks! I wrote a small plugin for this on my website.
Best wishes!
Hi Ben,
I'm glad that you like my little article 😉
Best regards, Toby