Where the footer lives depends on your theme: the Site Editor in block themes, the Customizer and widgets in classic themes, or your page builder's theme builder. How to tell which you have, then edit, remove or add to the footer in each.
First check what kind of theme you have. If the Appearance menu shows Editor, it’s a block theme. If it shows Customize and Widgets, it’s a classic theme. Then:
In a block theme the footer is a template part, one block area that every template shares, so a change shows up on every page. WordPress’s Site Editor guide puts it under Patterns:
You can also open any page in the Site Editor, click the footer and choose Edit. Your changes are saved in the database rather than the theme’s files, so a theme update won’t undo them, and the template part’s options menu can take it back to the theme’s original. The Template Part block guide covers creating a second footer for some pages.
Twenty Twenty-Five, WordPress’s default theme, ends its footer with Designed with WordPress. That’s an ordinary paragraph in the template part: select it, then retype or delete it.
Classic themes build the footer from footer.php plus a few settings screens. Where each part lives:
To remove a “Proudly powered by WordPress” credit, use the theme’s own setting if it has one. Otherwise copy footer.php into a child theme and edit the copy. Never edit the parent theme’s file: the next theme update overwrites it.
When a page builder draws the footer, edit it in the builder, not the theme.
If the footer you see doesn’t change when you edit one of these, the theme may be printing its own footer as well. Check the theme’s Customizer settings for an option to hide it.
Scripts that must load on every page, such as a chat widget or a tracking tag, belong in the wp_footer hook, which prints just before the closing body tag. Add them with a plugin such as WPCode (3 million+ installs), or hook them in from a child theme’s functions.php. Pasting code straight into a theme’s footer.php works until the next theme update.
For a one-page change rather than a site-wide one, edit that page instead; our guide to duplicating a page shows how to try changes on a copy first.
Footer edits are the kind of small, site-wide change WPOS handles in one request. Its agent works inside wp-admin on the sites you already run, on any host. It edits natively in the builder the site already uses, whether that’s Gutenberg, Elementor or Divi, and checks the result with a browser screenshot before it reports done:
“In the footer, add a Contact link to the Company column, change the copyright line to © 2026 Northwind Studio, and remove the Designed with WordPress credit.”
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In a block theme it's the Footer template part, under Appearance > Editor > Patterns. In a classic theme it's footer.php, with settings under Appearance > Customize and widget areas under Appearance > Widgets.
In a block theme, delete the credit paragraph in the Footer template part. In a classic theme, use the theme's footer setting if it has one, or edit footer.php in a child theme.
The Site Editor only appears with a block theme. On a classic theme, use Appearance > Customize, Widgets and Menus.
Not if you made them in the Site Editor, the Customizer or a child theme, because those are stored outside the theme's files. Edits to the parent theme's footer.php are lost at the next update.
Yes. In a block theme, make a second footer template part and use it in a custom template for that page. In Elementor Pro, give a second footer template a display condition for that page.
Use a plugin such as WPCode, or hook the script into wp_footer from a child theme, rather than pasting it into theme files.
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