Automatic Update to your Website Copyright Date

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Friday, 01 January 2010 00:00 Written by Grant Melrose

Have you remembered to check that your website copyright statement has been updated to 2010?

Your Copyright statement is usually at the bottom of each page and may look something like this:

Copyright © 2010 Business Tools Limited. All rights reserved.
Company Registered in England. Company No. 06730248


If you are using a Content Management System (CMS) like Joomla, this is usually published in the Footer, or Legals position. For example, the screen-shot below shows the Joomla Administration screen while I am editing a Custom HTML Module in the footer position.

Copyright published in Joomla footer position

If you are wondering how to get the copyright symbol, it is character number #169 in the Standard ISO Character Set used by most browsers (ISO-8859-1).

In HTML, we can use © or © to get the desired effect.

For example:

<div id="thiscopyright" style="text-align: center;">
    Copyright &copy; 2010 Your Business Name Here. All rights reserved.<br />
    Company Registered in England. Company No. nnnnnnnn
</div>

Some websites automatically calculate the date and display the new year from January 1st onward. If you want the same effect, you will need some script like this (assuming your webserver is a php flavour):

<div id="thiscopyright" style="text-align: center;">
    Copyright &copy; <?php echo(date('Y')); ?> Your Business Name Here. All rights reserved.<br />
    Company Registered in England. Company No. nnnnnnnn
</div>

You could copyright from the date of your incorporation to the present day using something like this:

<div id="thiscopyright" style="text-align: center;">
    Copyright &copy; 2008-<?php echo(date('Y')); ?> Your Business Name Here. All rights reserved.<br />
    Company Registered in England. Company No. nnnnnnnn
</div>


Just change the 2008 to your start-up year.

Unfortunately, if you are using Joomla CMS, you can't just cut and paste the above code into your editor. When you try to save it, the script parts are removed. You can get special editor plug-ins which allow you to enter script into your content, but that is a lot of hastle for just this one small change. Alternatively, you can make a small code change inside your chosen Joomla web template to achieve the same result.
And its worth making this effort. Not only does it convey to your customers that you are on the ball with your website, but it also demonstrates to the Google Search Engine that your site is regularly maintained, implying fresh up to date content. 

So, hopefully you can now update your site Copyright this year, and relax on the 1st January next year, and the next, knowing that your dates will automatically change.

Or if you are happy to part with £10 to save you some time, Business2dot0 can do it for you.  

Choose web pages or template


If you wanted to put a registered trademark in your footer, like YourBusiness®, you need character number #174. In HTML use &#174; or &reg;.

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