Need a little help with removing "Powered by" text from footer area of wordpress theme

As the title says. I tried it myself but the code for it is not found in footer.php file, responsible for its display. I guess it is a bit more advanced than what I know. The theme is "Benevolent". It can be installed for free from "Add theme" menu in wordpress dashboard. Pro theme costs about $55. I am not using pro theme but the free theme.

Let me know if you can help.

EDIT: On second thoughts, if you need me to provide the theme files, I can do that. Thank you.

 

Could always use a display:hidden to hide it from view although it brings to question why you're trying to hide the powered by. The theme developer spent his time and effort creating a theme and all he requires is a backlink

 

I shall check with your tip. And please don't divert the topic.

 

He did not divert it, he gave an answer and told you why your idea was not a good plan.

Some are in the functions, being made that if you delete/modify the powered by and theme credit the theme will lock to displaying an error page.

Some used to be coded with MD5, but that is easily decoded and removed.

I used to remove some of the footer links, since I did not mind the theme credit, but the links that were built in for pharma annoyed me to no end.

 

I did not ask question on whether it is good or bad to remove the footer link; I asked how to remove it. So it does count as diversion, according to me.

Everybody is free to have an opinion and so am I. I needed to remove the footer link, why do I have to answer why I need to do so?

BTW, I finally found and removed the code responsible for the footer link.

Also, to answer the "why" question, the "powered by" text is used by spammers as footprint to search and find particular framework to do comment spam or send security attacks. I hope I am not giving ideas to fresh spammers.

I don't think it is a crime to harden site security. If you visit my site, you will also not find the usual wp-admin and a few other standard features associated with wordpress sites and my site just works great without the added stress of security breaches.

I hope I have answered the concerns of all who think it is not right to remove the footer link.

 

I am indifferent toward it myself.

Just watch those themes with the function check, what a pain those are.

 

You are kidding, right? Why in the WORLD would "Powered by:" invite spammers/crooks? There are literally thousands of other ways to know that it's wordpress, for instance 2 seconds looking at source code. But, as long as you don't take away the link to the creator of the theme, by all means, remove the powered by wordpress link. And believe that you have "hardened security". What a joke...

 

Yeah... just to let the OP know - I don't have to search for "powered by wordpress" to find out what sites run wordpress. There are scanners available that will list "all" (I put all in quotes, since of course it won't find all, but quite a few hundred thousands) sites running WP based on specific criteria - country, version, TLD, and so on. It's really not interesting, and it's only amateurs that look for anything via "powered by..."

 

Removing the obvious is always the first step, but not the only step. Yeah, people who are determined will always find a way and there are many ways to find if an installation is based on wordpress. But that cannot be a reason to be complacent and not take any action at all.

If you read my post correctly, I said that I take other steps as well, to "harden" the security of my site.

Online security is a long battle that is being fought since first release of windows software. The solution is continuous updates which I am following. The more I know about threats, the more I shall find about remedying them and implement them.

Wordpress has many vulnerabilities but that is the only software that I know quite well so I still stick with it. Due to spam I had to take down my whole network of blogs affecting my earnings. I guess those kinds of incidents have made me paranoid towards security.

I know about SQL injection, long urls, special query strings, and quite a few other ways to attack a wordpress site. But as said, as I found out about them, I took steps to block them.

 

I have always used akismet, yet I had swathes of spam comments and spam users, inflating my database, slowing down my server and making it difficult to manage my sites. I will try your other suggestion (Pareto) and see if it gives better result. But I also have already implemented some other remedies to counter the issue of spam registrations and comments.

I don't mind giving the theme author credit, in fact it is his right to get credit but I am paranoid towards site security and won't leave any hole remain open that I know of, whether signicant or insignificant. Rather I'd buy the pro theme later and compensate for any loss of opportunity to the theme author.

 

The point is that what you're doing does not affect security, at all. As soon as you understand that, we can discuss things like rational adults. It might fool some crappy spam-bots that for some reason looks for that, instead of looking through the actual code on the site, to find a WP-blog. But I doubt it.
While being vigilant about cyber-security, it's sort of a joke when you're using WP, the Swiss cheese of "internet security" if there ever was one. While it's hard to battle spam, spam has nothing to do with security, per se. It has to do with smart handling of said spam, which can be countered in many ways, some more effective than others. Akismet, while able to catch the simplest attempts, aren't that good anymore, really, because they have stayed in the past, while everyone else, including the spammers, have moved on. Simplest way to bypass Akismet? Find a blog that allows editing, post something innocuous, wait till it's approved, and voila, you usually get less checks. Then edit the post, and voila, in most cases Akismet isn't working on edits, just on posts.

While I do understand paranoia, need to secure and such, I'm just saying that there are things that are worth doing, and things that have no real effect, hence no rational reason to do them. This is one of the latter.

 

Thousand people do thousand things, you cannot rationalize everything. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is ultimate, there is always something more to be done, something new to be found. People do things based on their experiences and what they know. These experiences and gained information itself may be based on several factors. You cannot dictate how and how much of these information and experiences one must gain to exercise his choice. That amounts to slavery (and other related terms). If I don't feel like keeping a footer link, I will not, whatever be the reason. That's my choice and I don't need to explain anything to anyone.

Leave me alone and stop trying to preach me. I didn't ask for any of this. If I knew it would be such a nightmare to get answer to such a simple question, I wouldn't have put it here in the first place. I will definitely keep this in mind when I need help next time.

One of the members offered to help me for a fee when obviously there was no mention of it in the thread itself. I guess, if I had posted this in BST->Programming section, I wouldn't have been badgered so much and got everything done peacefully.

 

You do understand how forums work, right? It's a public thread, it's our right to ask you whatever we bloody wants, and getting a rationale behind a request can often lead to a better understanding of the actual problem, and better answers. The better answer in this case would be "just don't". That you don't want to listen to advice is your problem, not mine.

I'm aware that people do things based on their own experience, instead of fact-checking, research and rational thought. By all means, there is a reason quite a big part of the US is considering voting in the tanning-salon horror-story as their president. People do stupid things all the time - that doesn't make it any smarter.

And no, I'm not gonna "leave you alone" - hell, I don't even know the last bit about you, all I know is that you refuse to listen to rational advice, you talk about stuff you don't seem to have any clue as to how works, and you think that removing a link in a footer on a website promotes "web security". What you should take away from this thread is that people with more knowledge than you have adviced against the removal of the link based on the reasons you've given. If it's just because it looks ugly, and you don't want it there - fine. If the reasons are what you've said they are, then you need to rethink your stance and do better research, because your reasoning is about the same level of rational thought as the anti-vaxination-brigade.

 

*TALK TO MY HAND*

 

You want us to talk to your girlfriend?

 

Only if you are not jealous of her

Love your avatar, such beautiful and lovely eye. I am not being sarcastic, truly complementing you

 

• Like some have said, the backlink or "powered by" text is sometimes "locked in" to a theme to prevent someone from deleting it. I do agree with others that someone worked hard to make that theme and they deserve to get some kind of reward for it.

• Me personally, I would make a theme good enough that a link back to my site was never needed. It would be remarkable enough to stand on its own just by its looks and usability, and attract more sales that way.

• After having said all that, nothing is impossible. You can do what you want to do with enough work.

 

After reading this old thread I chose to sign up just to post a response to it. Footer.php doesn't contain the credits for many themes. Frankly, it seems to me that the OP looked in footer.php and called it a day. Why? I installed Benevolent yesterday and found the answer in under 2 minutes. That the OP never updated this thread means either a) s/he never figured it out, or b) never thought to share the answer once s/he found it.

Either way, for future readers, here's the answer. The credits in Benevolent can be found using the editor. Navigate to Theme files > inc > extras.php

Down around line 580-ish you'll find the following function:

function benevolent_footer_credit()

Within this function you'll find the lines you wish to remove.

You're welcome.

 

I'm sure the pro theme has the credit removed. Just upgrade to the pro theme and pay the $55. Or make your own theme.... I imagine paying the fee is quicker and more productive of your time.