Add Link To A Custom WordPress Footer

Posted by Jeff

on February 8, 2010

One of the easiest ways to customize WordPress is to add links to the footer of the themes template. You could add the link to any website you want and if your blog is part of your website adding a link to the homepage of your site will help your search engine rankings as well. This is a little WordPress Guide that will help interlink your website.

First make sure you can edit your theme’s footer.php file by making in writable in your hosting account. Login to your hosting account, browse to your blogs folder, the wp-content folder and then the themes folder. Look for your current theme and open that folder. Change the file permissions to at least the footer.php file to 777 or 666.

Login to your blog, click Presentation, then Theme Editor, look for the Footer file on the right and click it to open it in the editor. First copy all the content in this file and save it as a text file in Notepad on your computer. That way if you mess things up you can just paste the original code back in to start over.

Now look for the links that are already in place, for the default theme that will look like this:

<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> is proudly powered by
<a href=”http://wordpress.org/”>WordPress</a>

We want to add a link right after this code, Place your mouse right after the original code and hit the space bar once and add your new link code. Or you could just copy the original code and paste it right after it and then edit the URL, the anchor text and even place some text in front of it like this:

<a href=”http://wordpress.org/”>WordPress</a> More Optional Text <a href=”http://YourWebsite.com”>Anchor Text</a>

Now Click Update File, open your site and marvel at your handy work!

If you are using a free theme that someone wrote and it has a link to their website in it please leave the link intact. After all that is a small price to pay for what they have provided you.

This post and the below video are almost two years old but you should still get the gist of how to accomplish this.

Sorry but I will not address your questions about specific issues regarding your theme.

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Sorry but due to the spamming of a few all comments are moderated and will appear when approved and all drive-by comments will be deleted!

Comments

Comment by Rose on July 22, 2007 @ 4:03 pm

Thanks for the excellent tutorial. I gave it a thumbs up at Bumbzee and I digg it.

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Comment by Kathy on August 21, 2007 @ 2:11 pm

Thank you for a clear and easy-to-follow explanation!

Comment by fooksea on September 16, 2007 @ 9:17 pm

Thanks for the excellent tutorial.

Comment by Gaje Master on February 21, 2008 @ 4:23 pm

Thank you so much. I have been wondering how to do this. I am still searching for a way to add stuff like mybloglog and such to the footer of the page instead of on my sidebar, any tips?

Comment by Jeff on February 21, 2008 @ 5:24 pm

Gene, you could probably add the script or code or anything directly into the footer.php file.

However you may need to resize the footer area to accommodate the size of the items you want to place in it. And also format the items you add to be in the position you want.

Theme modifications like this are hard to explain in a post let alone a comment because of all the different themes and how they are coded.

Comment by Naj on March 8, 2008 @ 4:24 am

Thanks for the excellent tutorial.

Comment by Matthew Jones on March 27, 2008 @ 11:09 pm

Thank’s I never could do this before

Comment by kwietnik on May 15, 2008 @ 4:08 pm

Thanks

Comment by Erik Rexach on June 20, 2008 @ 10:54 pm

Great Tutorial! Even a newbie could follow!

Comment by Drew on July 13, 2008 @ 10:15 pm

my footer code looks like this… how do I change it?

Comment by Fiat 500 India on July 21, 2008 @ 3:10 am

Hello, Thank you for great tutorial.. I have a question..

I want the ‘title’ of each single post to appear in the page’s footer.

For this, i pasted the code:

” rel=”bookmark” title=”">

in the footer..

The following happens: I get a link to my sixth post (in every footer).

The same code is present for the (title) and just before the comments block – but it works fine there.

I am unable to find/solve the problem – could you please help me out.

Thanks & Regards.

Comment by Fiat 500 India on July 21, 2008 @ 3:12 am

I Pasted this code:

(it did not appear correct in the earlier message above).

Comment by Jeff on July 21, 2008 @ 8:11 am

The reason you can’t find any info about putting the title of the post in the footer is because it is probably very difficult to do.

You would have to set it up for different “What If” situations. Remember this one footer.php file is used an all pages and posts on the blog so what if it is a page with multiple posts on it. There is more code needed to make this work the way you want, of which I don’t know I suggest looking at http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page.

Comment by Free Wordpress Themes on August 18, 2008 @ 7:12 pm

The post was very informative, but the video made it so much easier to learn. Thanks!

Comment by David Young Jr on December 8, 2008 @ 12:23 pm

This information is useful. My blog is very difficult to customize fully as it is in xml. If anyone knows any resources on editing pages in xml code I would love to hear from you.

Comment by Cash gifting on December 14, 2008 @ 2:28 pm

great video and post!!! Thanks!

Comment by lowongan kerja on March 7, 2009 @ 12:51 am

Good video….i like it

Comment by Roger | Save Money Tips on March 14, 2009 @ 3:13 am

Although this is very basic thing which we should know but is it allowed to delete wordpress link at the footer and to include our own? Isn’t counted as illegal thing?

Jeff Replied:
March 14th, 2009 at 7:59 am

Roger you could remove the link to WordPress.org but should keep any links to themes author intact on the footer of a free WordPress theme. Keeping the authors links is considered the price of using the theme.

Comment by Vanessa on March 17, 2009 @ 3:22 pm

I have been reading some snippet on SEO and came to know that we should place our links and keywords in proper structure i.e something on header and footer etc. I was looking for updating footer in wordpress and here your handy blog is on my screen. Thanks for sharing. It is good to read actual post and comments here.

Comment by Write And Get Paid Today on April 9, 2009 @ 5:08 am

Comment by Cool Travel Blogs on May 7, 2009 @ 1:35 am

Thanks for great post! It really made it easy and quick to learn! Just in time for me! Cheers

Comment by Bostn Web Design on May 12, 2009 @ 7:08 am

Great tutorial. I think this is great for SEO too. Big G is starting to recognize links down the side and not pay much attention to them anymore. Footer links can be an asset to SEO. Thanks again! Dan

Comment by Graco Car Seats on May 20, 2009 @ 2:35 am

This is great. Nicely explained. Just the thing I was looking for. Wanted to add link to my footer too. Thanks for sharing the information. This is very useful.

Comment by Vanessa on May 21, 2009 @ 5:20 pm

@Boston web design, Are you sure? Do these footer links help in SEO? How can we use them to support SEO? I’ll be very grateful if you can send me information on this.

Comment by Internet Marketing Site on May 23, 2009 @ 12:26 pm

Hi
What a great info. I think that footer is hard to be edited. However,It is not hard anymore after I read this post.
Have a nice blogging.

Comment by Chandra Wijaya on May 27, 2009 @ 1:27 am

Its really clear and to the point explanation. Really good for beginner to understand it. Thanks for sharing.

Comment by Outsourcing Software Company on May 27, 2009 @ 10:38 pm

Nice post. One of the best tutorials I’ve seen lately. Your explanation is very good. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Keep up the good work.

Comment by Inland Empire Web Design on May 28, 2009 @ 3:07 am

I really want to add a footer on my wordpress blog. thank you very much for this!

Comment by Felix on May 30, 2009 @ 10:51 am

Is it possible that the placement of footer links be part of the option of WP? Is there any plug-in to do this thing? or shall we stick on footer.php editing methods?

Jeff Replied:
May 30th, 2009 at 1:46 pm

The footer links are theme specific so no way to control them from within the WP dashboard, unless the specific themes footer was “widgetized” like a sidebar.

I know of no plugins but really editing the theme is not really that hard and how often does it need done anyway?

Comment by Allan on June 22, 2009 @ 2:36 pm

Nice information. I am about to relaunch my site with blog and forums and I think it is a cool way to interlink them.

Comment by Costello on June 28, 2009 @ 1:14 pm

Thanks for sharing the post because I forgot the exact place where I should edit it. There are many files in the theme and I was checking others.

Comment by Link Building Services on June 30, 2009 @ 5:56 am

I am about to relaunch my site with blog and forums and I think it is a cool way to interlink them.

Comment by Autopilot on July 1, 2009 @ 4:32 pm

great tutorial, now i know a little bit more about worldpress, cool

Comment by Max Gates on July 4, 2009 @ 8:05 pm

Great tutorial, reading your blogs has made wordpress easy to manage for me, earlier it was like hell to manage my blog.

Comment by SEO on July 5, 2009 @ 7:09 am

Jeff, Thanks for the excellent tutorial!

Comment by raymond parker on July 5, 2009 @ 3:35 pm

does this violate any trademarks of the original theme owner?

Jeff Replied:
July 5th, 2009 at 5:04 pm

Depends on the particular theme, but usually adding to a footer is an acceptable practice as long as you keep the original links intact.

Comment by webuildlink.com on July 7, 2009 @ 3:35 am

thanks . How Can I add links in wordpress footer encrypted?

Comment by Jane Says on July 15, 2009 @ 1:03 am

Thanks, this was a great commentary, I am always looking for better ways to improve my WP blogs.

Comment by Scarface on July 15, 2009 @ 3:59 am

I thought that footer is hard to be edited, but now clear explanation mades it easy to learn!
Thank you for great tutoria!

Comment by Harsh Agrawal on September 13, 2009 @ 5:34 pm

Thanks man that is super easy to do.

Comment by Helen on October 24, 2009 @ 6:39 pm

Hello Jeff,
Thanks for your informative video.
I would like to add a right-justified “Disclaimer” link to my footer.php, that would open up a dialog box with the disclaimer’s content. What would be the HTML code to do this?

Thanks.

Helen

Jeff Replied:
October 24th, 2009 at 7:34 pm

Sorry I am not sure how to do that. I suggest to Google pop up HTML code. The code doesn’t need to be WordPress specific as any HTML that does it should work.

Comment by Helen on October 24, 2009 @ 7:40 pm

Okay. Thanks.

Comment by mette on February 3, 2010 @ 2:53 pm

Thank you, thank you… Jeff. This has been most helpful. I don’t usually have such a problem with the technical stuff, but I have spent over a week of way too many hours trying to figure this out. What you did differently is explain WHERE EXACTLY to write the new URL in the footer.php. That little tidbit helps me to move on to the next thing I want to do to make a better blog. I will search your site first in the future.
Thank again,
Mette

Comment by Michelle | LargeFormatPosters.com on February 8, 2010 @ 9:25 pm

This is very helpful. Wordpress can be such a handful, so having a step by step process is extremely helpful and convenient.

Comment by Andrew@BloggingGuide on February 8, 2010 @ 10:18 pm

This is really a very useful post especially to the newbies. Thanks for sharing!

Comment by Jerin on February 9, 2010 @ 5:31 am

Thank You Jeff, for the wonderful and simple step-by-step guide and the video. I have been looking for something like this for our Dedicated Servers site.

Drive-By comments will be deleted! Like "Thanks for sharing", "Nice post", or any other text that doesn't contribute to the discussion. If you ask a very specific question about your particular WordPress theme, it will probably be deleted. I can fix your WordPress site but for a price. If you ask a question like "Why don't my blog work right", it will be deleted. If you ask a question about your WordPress site without a leaving a link to it, it will be deleted. The point is to ask questions and or comment on the the actual content of the post, and to please use some common sense. All comments are moderated and will appear when approved. Thank you.