Scroll to the bottom of your own website and read the footer as a stranger would. Phone numbers change, old email addresses get retired, and the copyright year quietly falls behind. Footers get set up once at launch and then forgotten, which is a pity, because people who reach the bottom of a page are often the ones looking for a way to contact you.
If you have tried to edit the footer in WordPress and could not find where the text comes from, you are in good company. The footer can be a template part, a set of theme settings, a row of widgets or a page builder template, and sometimes it is a mixture of two. Find out which you have first, and changing the footer text, columns and links becomes ordinary editing.
What a small-business footer should hold
Before editing, decide what you want there. A useful footer is short and practical:
- Your business name, and an address if customers visit you or you serve a local area.
- A phone number and email address that are actually monitored.
- Links to the pages people look for last: Contact, Privacy Policy, Terms, perhaps Careers.
- Opening hours, if they matter to your customers.
- Social media links, if you keep those profiles active.
- A copyright line.
Anything else, such as a full list of every service or a long paragraph about your history, usually works better on a page. Keep the address and phone number written exactly as they appear on your Google Business Profile and other listings, so customers and search engines see the same details everywhere.
Work out where the footer is made
The Appearance menu gives it away. An Editor item there means a block theme, so the footer is a template part. Customize and Widgets mean a classic theme. When neither one seems to change the footer, suspect a page builder. For a fuller explanation of the three setups, read our overview of the WordPress header, footer and menus.
A quicker clue: right-click a word in the footer on the live site and choose Inspect. Class names containing “wp-block-template-part” point to a block theme, names containing “widget” point to a classic widget area, and names containing “elementor” point to Elementor.
How to edit the footer in WordPress with a block theme
- Open the Site Editor from Appearance → Editor.
- Either choose Patterns, where the footer is listed among the template parts, or open a template such as Pages, scroll down to its footer and select that area.
- Click into any text and type, just as you would on a page. The footer is made of ordinary blocks: Paragraphs, Columns, Navigation, Social Icons, Site Title and so on.
- To add a column for opening hours, select the Columns block and add a column, or add a Group block with a heading and paragraph inside.
- Click Save. The change applies to every template that uses this footer.
Some themes include several footer designs. If your edit shows on blog posts but not on pages, two templates are using different footers. Open the Templates list, check which footer each one uses, and either edit both or switch one template to the footer you prefer.
Made a mess of it? The footer’s options menu in the Site Editor includes a reset that puts back the design your theme shipped with. It discards every change you ever made to that footer, not just today’s, so treat it as a fresh start rather than an undo.
Classic themes: footer settings and footer widgets
In a classic theme the footer usually has two layers.
Theme settings in the Customizer
Go to Appearance → Customize and look for a section called Footer, Footer Bar, Copyright or similar. Names vary by theme. This is where most themes let you change the copyright text, the number of footer columns, colours and a bottom bar. Themes with a footer builder, such as Astra and Kadence, show a layout grid here where you drag elements like text, menus and social links into rows.
The Customizer previews your change before it goes live. Nothing is visible to visitors until you press Publish.
Footer widget areas
The columns of content above the copyright line are often widget areas, named something like Footer 1, Footer 2 and Footer 3. Edit them under Appearance → Widgets or in the Customizer’s Widgets panel. Each area holds blocks, so you can add a Heading and Paragraph for your address, a Navigation Menu widget for useful links, or a Social Icons block. Our walkthrough of WordPress widgets covers how these areas work.
One trap in many themes: the footer column setting and the widget areas have to agree. If the Customizer says two columns, anything in Footer 3 and Footer 4 will not show, even though it looks fine on the Widgets screen.
Footers built in a page builder
If Elementor Pro or another builder supplies the footer, the theme’s footer settings may do nothing at all. In Elementor, open Templates → Theme Builder, find the footer template and edit it like any Elementor page. Check its display conditions before you publish, since a footer set to show on the entire site but excluded from one type of page leaves that type with no footer.
Builder footers often have hard-typed text in a Text or Heading widget. If your address has changed and also appears in the header, the contact page and a call-to-action section, you will need to change it in each place. Some builders offer global or dynamic content to avoid this; it is worth setting up if your details change often.
Keeping the copyright year current
A footer that says “© 2021” tells visitors nobody is looking after the site. There are a few ways to keep it right.
- A theme placeholder. Some theme footer builders accept a placeholder that prints the current year automatically. Check your theme’s documentation for the exact wording.
- A small snippet. A short PHP snippet, added through a plugin such as Code Snippets, can register a shortcode that prints the year. Use the snippet only from a source you trust, and never paste PHP into the theme’s own files.
- A yearly reminder. Type the year by hand and put a calendar reminder for the first working day of January. Low-tech, and perfectly fine.
- No year at all. “© Your Business Name” with no date is common and avoids the problem.
Text you cannot find anywhere
Sometimes a line in the footer is not in any setting you can see. Usual suspects:
- A theme credit, such as “Proudly powered by WordPress” or the theme author’s name. It may be hard-coded in the theme. We cover removing it properly, without hiding it with CSS, in the post on removing the powered-by line from your footer.
- A synced pattern in a block theme. Text inside a synced pattern is edited in the pattern itself, and the change appears wherever it is used.
- A plugin’s output. Cookie notices, back-to-top buttons and chat bubbles add themselves near the footer. Their wording is in the plugin’s settings.
Check it on a phone, then check it again later
Footer columns stack on small screens, one under another. A three-column footer that looks tidy on a laptop can become a long scroll on a phone, with your phone number at the very bottom. Look at the order, and move the most useful column first if your theme allows it.
Make the phone number a tap-to-call link and the email a mail link while you are there. If you also want social icons in the footer, our post on adding social media icons in WordPress covers the block and theme options.
Put a footer check into your routine whenever your details change. Our guide on how to manage a WordPress website puts it in the same routine as menus, settings and users.
Frequently asked questions
Should the footer repeat the main menu?
Usually not in full. The footer works better with a short list of the pages people look for at the end, such as Contact, Privacy Policy and your main services. Most classic themes offer a separate footer menu location, and in a block theme you can give the footer its own Navigation block with a different, shorter menu.
I work from home. Do I have to show my address in the footer?
No. If customers never visit you, showing your town or the area you serve is common and keeps your home address private. Google Business Profile also lets service-area businesses hide their address. Whatever you choose, use the same wording on the website and your listings so the details match.
Should I put a map in the footer?
Usually not on every page. An embedded map loads extra code on every visit, which slows pages down, and most visitors do not need it on a blog post. A linked address in the footer and a map on the contact page give the same help with less weight.
Why does my footer change show for me but not for visitors?
That is almost always caching. Logged-in users often bypass the cache, so you see the live version while visitors get a stored copy. Empty the caching plugin first, then whatever cache your host or CDN keeps, and look again from a private browser window.
A footer is a small job until it is spread across a theme, a builder and three widget areas at once. When yours needs a proper tidy-up, or a layout the theme does not offer, our theme customisation service can rebuild it with the content kept in as few places as your setup allows.
Next in this series: How to Remove Powered by WordPress From Your Footer
