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How to Customize Your Lightning Theme Footer Credits and Copyright

21 threads Sep 9, 2025 Theme → Lightning

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Many users of the Lightning theme want to personalize their website's footer by changing or removing the default credit text, which reads "Powered by WordPress & Lightning Theme by Vektor, Inc." This is a common request for those creating sites for clients or wanting to add their own branding. This guide will walk you through the most common methods to achieve this.

Why This Happens

The Lightning theme, like many WordPress themes, includes a default footer credit. This is typically hardcoded into the theme's footer.php template file. The theme developers include this to get credit for their work, but they also provide official methods for users to customize it.

Common Solutions

Method 1: Use the Official Customizer Plugin (Recommended)

The Lightning team suggests using their dedicated plugin for this purpose. It provides a user-friendly interface to change the footer text without touching any code.

  1. Install and activate the "Lightning Copyright Customizer" plugin. You can find it by searching for that name or by visiting the official Lightning theme website.
  2. Once activated, a new menu item for customizing the footer copyright text should appear in your WordPress dashboard.
  3. Navigate to this section and enter your desired text or HTML, including the dynamic year using code like <?php echo date("Y"); ?> if you wish.

Method 2: Manually Edit the Footer.php File (Advanced)

Warning: Directly editing theme files is not recommended for beginners. Any changes you make will be overwritten when the theme updates, so you must re-apply them each time. Always use a child theme for this method to preserve your changes.

  1. Access your site's files via FTP or your hosting provider's file manager.
  2. Navigate to /wp-content/themes/lightning/.
  3. Locate and open the footer.php file.
  4. Find the line of code that outputs the footer credit text.
  5. Edit or remove that line and replace it with your own custom text. To add a dynamic copyright year, you can use the PHP snippet: <?php echo date("Y"); ?> Your Name</code>.
  6. Save the file and clear your site's cache if you use a caching plugin.

Important Considerations

  • Before removing the credit, check the theme's licensing terms to ensure you are compliant.
  • Using a child theme is the best practice for any theme file modification, as it protects your work from being lost during updates.
  • If you are not comfortable with code, Method 1 (the plugin) is the safest and easiest approach.

By following one of these methods, you can successfully tailor the footer of your Lightning theme to match your site's branding perfectly.

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