Every year, it’s same routine. The morning after Dec. 31, you have to log into your WordPress site and manually update the copyright notice to reflect the new year.

For a lot of website owners manually updating the copyright year in the WordPress footer.php template isn’t necessarily a difficult or time-consuming task — but you have to remember to actually do it. And if you manage more than one WordPress site, the process becomes quite tiresome.

But updating the copyright notice EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. doesn’t have to be a dreaded update. In fact, there’s a quick and painless way to have WordPress automatically update the copyright year for you.

And it doesn’t require a plugin; which is a nice bonus.

How to Easily Update the Copyright Notice

Just replace the current line of code in your footer.php file with this;

Copyright <php echo date('Y'); ?> by <a href="<php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><php bloginfo('name'); ?></a> All rights reserved.

The first code snippet “echo date(‘Y’)” will automatically display the current year.

The second part will display your blog name (linked to your home page). If you don’t need the name linked, simply remove the href links.

That’s it!

Your copyright notice year in your WordPress site will now be automatically current, every year.