How Can I Protect Designer Copyright in Wordpress Themes Footer? Why Use Encrypted Code? Why people remove Designer Link?

August 29th, 2008 in  Articles

Today I would talk about a serious problem that strikes all web designers. During my lasts researches, I’ve found thousands of posts discriminating against all web designer that choose of encrypt footer in their themes. Before you proceed reading this post, you must know that actually not exist a really working solution to protect our name into the footer of a web page.

A valid sample is provided by many wordpress theme designers that encrypt footer.php in their theme. In most cases, footer.php contains only simple HTML code, some DIV tag and the Designer Link.

To remove the footer link, the easiest way in this case is: open website that runs your theme in a browser, view its source code ( View -> Source ), select code from tag <div id=”footer” ( or something similar ) up to tag </html>. Paste the code into a new file called footer.php. This simple example show how was possible bypass the limit imposed by the Author of the Theme avoiding particulars techniques of decrypting.

The attempt of a webdesigner that release a Free Wordpress Theme is to obtain backlinks in order to promote himself and his portfolio. The Author only ask to a theme user only to leave intact the link of the Author.  It is amazing to notice as, without some effort, user comes to remove the Author’s Link violating copyrights. The same bloggers that use free themes complain the fact that many themes have the footer encrypted. I have read thousands of posts where the designers that choose to encrypt the footer come denigrated, as if crypting is a dark practice.

Nevertheless, the answer to all the questions is a single one. Furthermore, this same answer would have to be given to all the bloggers that use free themes that offend the job of web designers: “If you want to user our theme free of charge then leaves intact the Author’s Link. If the link does not appeal to you, not to use the theme, nobody forces you to use a free theme”. Nevertheless, hundreds of demands on forums with the following are found: “How can I decrypt the footer of my Wordpress Theme?”.

It’s also true that many Wordpress Themes with encrypted footer contain to their inside a potentially harmful code. For this reason, my only council is to only carry out the download of the theme always from the Author’s Site. I conclude this post hoping to receive comments and I pray that this article comes shared (Digg It, Stumble It)