How to Edit the Footer in WordPress (5 Ways)

In WordPress, the footer is displayed across your entire site. This makes it the ideal place for adding important information that you want people to see. However, unlike other parts of your site, footers can be slightly tricky to edit.

The good news is there are different ways to customize the footer in WordPress. If you’re a beginner, you can use widgets, the Site Editor, or built-in theme options. If you have more experience with WordPress, you can customize the footer with custom code.

In this post, we’ll discuss key elements to feature in the WordPress footer. Then, we’ll look at five different ways to edit the footer in WordPress. Let’s get to it!

What to Include in Your WordPress Footer

The WordPress footer is located at the very bottom of your website. It’s visible across every page, so it’s a great place to include important elements that you don’t want website visitors to overlook.

You can also add items that help people navigate your content more conveniently.

Here are some key components that you might like to add to your WordPress footer:

• Contact information
• A search box
• Social media icons
• Newsletter opt-in forms
• Links to key resources (e.g. popular products, recent posts, FAQ page)
• Privacy policy or copyright claims
• Badges and icons
• A full sitemap

Naturally, you don’t want to clutter the footer section, so you might incorporate just a few of these items. 

Note that the WordPress footer usually inherits its styling and formatting from your theme. However, there are ways to personalize it, which we’ll discuss in the next section. 

5 Ways to Edit and Personalize the Footer in WordPress

Now that you have some ideas about what to add to the footer, let’s look at how to customize it.

1. Add Widgets

Your theme might have WordPress footer widgets. These may include elements like a search bar and navigation.

You can access the footer widget area by clicking on Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress dashboard:

Note that you may find multiple footer widget areas. Therefore, it’s a good idea to preview your WordPress site to make sure that your widgets appear where they should.

To add a new widget, simply click on the + icon and select your preferred blocks. The only element that can be a bit tricky to incorporate is links. 

To do this, you’ll need to go to Appearance > Menus > Create new menu. Enter a menu name, select the WordPress footer location, and click on Create Menu:

Then, you can add all pages, posts, and categories from the column to the left-hand side. Once that’s done, click on Save Menu.

Now, return to the Widgets page, where you’ll need to add a Navigation Menu block. Here, use the Select Menu dropdown to choose the footer menu you just created:

You have the option to give the widget a title which will appear above the menu in the footer. Now, click on Update. If you want to add multiple sets of links, repeat the process.

2. Use Your Theme Settings

If you want to modify the visual aspects of the WordPress footer design, you can use the theme settings in the WordPress Theme Customizer.

To do this, go to Appearance > Customize. Depending on your theme, you may see slightly different options here.

There should be a dedicated Theme Footer section that lets you edit the colors, border, and footer text.

However, many WordPress themes provide a Widgets area (like the one in the dashboard) that enables you to change the footer content using blocks:

If you go to the Menus section in the Theme Customizer, you can use the built-in menu system to add links to your WordPress footer.

You can even create a brand new menu for your footer (like we showed you earlier):

Once you’re happy with the changes, you can update your live WordPress website. 

3. Insert Custom Code

If the options above are not enough, you can add code to the WordPress footer. Although this isn’t too complicated, you’ll need to be comfortable working with code snippets. 

If you only want to make small edits, you can use the WordPress Customizer. This is a great way to change the background color or adjust the margin and/or padding.

In the Customizer, you’ll need to scroll down to the Additional CSS section:

This is where you can enter your CSS snippets. For example, if you want to change the color of the footer content and border, you’d use a snippet such as:

.footer-widgets-outer-wrapper, .footer-top {
     border-color: #000;
}
.footer-nav-widgets-wrapper, #site-footer {
     background-color: #D7BDE2 ;
}

Naturally, you’ll need to insert the correct hex code to update the footer with the right color.

You can also install a code plugin like WPCode. Once you activate it on your site, go to Code Snippets > Header & Footer and locate the Footer box:

You’ll paste your code snippet here. Then, save the changes.

4. Use the Site Editor

If you have a block-based theme, you can use the Site Editor to edit the footer. This flexible tool lets you create and edit templates and template parts including headers and footers. 

Once you’ve activated a block theme, go to Appearance > Editor. Then, scroll down to the footer section to start customizing the template using blocks:

You can rearrange items in the footer, or add new elements using the + icon. For instance, you might insert a search box or social icons.

As we did in the Customizer, you can also add a navigation menu to the footer section. Or, you might use similar blocks that feature your page lists, latest comments, or previous/next posts.

If you want to change the structure of the footer, you can add more columns and rows. This is useful if there are lots of components you want to include. 

Then, you can use the Styles settings to the right of the editor to apply a background image, or change the font, color, padding, spacing, etc:

Click on Update to save your changes.

5. Install a Plugin

We don’t recommend becoming overly reliant on plugins since having too many of them can slow down your WordPress website. That said, if the previous methods seem too technical, you could install a plugin to achieve the desired effect.

However, you’ll be limited to the functionality that’s offered in the available options. So it’s not the best if you want to implement custom solutions.

Let’s say you want to include lots of information in the footer, but you don’t want it to look crowded. You could split the footer into multiple subsections using Footer Mega Grid Columns:

You might also like to remove the “Powered by WordPress” message that appears by default in all WordPress footers. Although you can disable the WordPress credit using code, you might prefer to use a plugin like Remove Footer Credit:

You can also use theme builders like Beaver Themer and Divi Builder to design custom templates for your WordPress footer. Many of these come with a drag-and-drop editor, which makes them very easy to use.

Conclusion

The footer in WordPress is typically visible across your entire website. This makes it the perfect home for key elements like social media icons, custom links, contact details, and opt-in forms. 

To recap, here’s how to edit the footer in WordPress:

1. Add widgets.
2. Use your theme settings.
3. Insert custom code.
4. Use the Site Editor.
5. Install a plugin.

Do you have any questions about how to edit footer in WordPress? Let us know in the comments below!

Sophia Lee

Sophia is a staff writer at WordCandy.co, where she produces quality blog content for WordPress plugin and theme developers, hosting providers, website development and design agencies, and other online businesses.