Did you ever download a theme you really wanted to use for your business, but you found the theme's footer contained a link to, say, a site promoting "Triple XXX Rated Adult Toys". And when you went to edit the link out of the footer, all you could see was a string of encoded characters?
Searching the web, you will find many sites, including the WordPress Forums, talking about Base64 decoders.
There is a simpler way. Your ~internet browser~ can decode the string; otherwise you wouldn't be able to read it as you visit the website.
Here's how:
1. Upload and activate the theme. Remember that for a few minutes, as you do this little procedure, your site will be live with the spammy link, unless you are using the Theme Test Drive plugin.
2. Click Appearance - Editor
3. Click on Footer.php. See it? There's the string of encoded characters that we need to convert to ordinary HTML so we can edit them.
4. Up at the top of the WordPress Dashboard, click Visit Site; you will be viewing your WordPress site with the theme installed.
5. Once your site is up on your screen, in your browser's menu bar click View -> Source. (It Firefox, it is View -> Page Source)
6. A second window (or tab) will open displaying the HTML code for the page. Scroll down until you see some thing <!-- Begin Footer --> or <div id="footer">
7. Copy everything in that Footer section ... all the way up to the </body> tab and paste it into a text editor. Notepad will do just fine. (A word processor, such as Word, will farkle it up.)
8. Now edit the footer section as needed. Yes, you will need to know just enough HTML to recognize link code <a href=> and to write out your own link. But that is not too difficult, trust me on that.
9. Go back to the WordPress Dashboard. Click Appearance -> Editor, and click Footer.php to open it.
10. Delete the entire contents of Footer.php (all the encoded stuff), and paste in the new footer code you just edited. Click update. Click Visit Site to check the final product.
One important point: I always leave links to the original creator of a theme. It's work. The person deserves credit for his or her work. If the theme's creator has links to special causes, I leave those, too. (Chris Pearson's NeoClassical Theme contains a link to Open Education, for example, although Chris does NOT encode any of his theme files.)
I just want to get rid of any links that might seem inappropriate for a business site, and I usually also want to add a credit for myself. Hey, if I hacked the theme beyond recognition, that's work, too!
Awesome! I am experimenting with a spot for advertising so I have to learn how to do this. I'm poking around with one page, but it appears to be coming along nicely. Link love is the name of the game (LOL). Thank you, Cher. :-)
C: I earn around $100 bucks or so a month with Google AdSense. Primarily from here http://www.losangelesforeclosure.info/ I figure it offsets some of my hosting and registration costs.
You'll want to put ads "above the fold", not down in the footer ... since you don't get paid unless people click on the ads, and they are more likely to click if the ad is visible. :-)
Joel Comm is my favorite AdSense guru. He actually seems pretty down to earth, not as swarmy as most of the get-rich-on-the internet folks.
I know this looks like an ad site, but you can listen to the little video anyway http://adsense-secrets.com/
(If you download the free book, he'll put you on his email list, which really isn't too bad, sometimes his emails have insteresting stuff.)
The one thing I would caution is that some of the entities that are linked in the footer are actually the people that paid for the theme to be developed. If there is a "no modification" clause in the theme, then one could be in violation of the terms of use and copyright law if they modify the footer.
I usually just pass on the theme... there are more out there. And I just found a REALLY cool one I am going to write about after I play with it a little more.
Cheryl,
Thanks for your instructions and direction with footers and themes on wordpress.
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@ Lane, That is a good point ... so yes, everyone, proceed with caution. Mostly, by the time I am finished with a theme, it bears little resemblance to the original :-) But, technically it is still a derivative work.....
@Rebecca, Thank you!
I'm seeing that a lot of the theme designers cool with their design being used as a basis for other designs, they just want credit for their part. But those footer people can get nasty... I just saw a blog war over footers on modified blogs... Angry Geeks...
Cheryl, you rock. It sounds like you have really been getting into hacking WP themes. My only recommendation when editing WP themes is that you save your work to a notepad document as you work. This will provide you with a back up in the event that you made a mistake.
Cheryl - This is way beyond my comprehension at this point. I am going to have to bookmark and learn more about wordpress and themes before I continue.