Dynamic Copyrights in ExpressionEngine

Posted on 18 July 2010 | by Ryan Battles

Don’t let your site’s copyright notice grow stagnant. ExpressionEngine provides an easy way to keep your site’s footer up to date.

At the footer, when you create the copyright for your site, keep the site looking fresh by using a variable for the current year. For example, don’t let this happen:

Instead, use ExpressionEngine’s date variable formatting:


© {current_time format="%Y"} Jovia Web Studio.

You will never be out of date (at least not in your copyright).

Now, there are some people who intentionally do not use this method. Mike Boyink of Train-ee ExpressionEngine Training stated in his session at the EECI2010 conference that he likes to manually update these copyrights in the footer of his client’s websites so that he can send them a quick note to wish them a happy new year and let them know that he’s updated their site’s copyright for them. This is a nice way to keep in touch with your clients and let them know that you are looking out for their best interests, just make sure that you don’t forget to do this, or you’ll certainly hear from them!