How to change the admin footer bar in WordPress

The admin footer bar is the one line of text displayed at the very bottom of your admin interface. By default it reads “Thank you for creating with WordPress” on the left, and shows the current WordPress version on the right.

You can however change this if you like. Perhaps you want to provide additional links to services you provide to your clients, or you may want to hide the version or WordPress branding – or you just want to de-clutter and feel that “less is more”. I head you!

The two areas can be targeted with two separate filters for which you need to create a function. Let’s start with the WordPress version first, the item on the right hand side.

WordPress Version

To remove it completely, you can do this:

// remove WordPress version
function demo_footer_version ($default) {
	return '';
}
add_filter ('update_footer', 'demo_footer_version', 999);

This will suppress the output. If you’d like to print something there instead, just return it like so:

// add some text instead of the WordPress version
function demo_footer_version ($default) {
	return 'Make sure to play the lottery';
}
add_filter ('update_footer', 'demo_footer_version', 999);

Feel free to add HTML links if you like. Notice the $default variable there, which contains what would normally be displayed in that space. Since you have access to it, you can add to the default content like this:

// add to the WordPress version
function demo_footer_version ($default) {
	return $default . ' - which is nice!';
}
add_filter ('update_footer', 'demo_footer_version', 999);

Admin Footer Message

You can tweak the item on the left exactly like that too by using a different filter.

// remove Admin message
function demo_footer_filter ($default) {
	return '';
}
add_filter ('admin_footer_text', 'demo_footer_filter');

or

// add something to the Admin message
function demo_footer_filter ($default) {
	return $default . ' Have a wonderful day!';
}
add_filter ('admin_footer_text', 'demo_footer_filter');

I’m using these options in my Zen Dash Plugin, take a closer look at the code and see if you can learn something from it.

• Zen Dash at WordPress.org: http://wordpress.org/plugins/zen-dash/
• Zen Dash on GitHub: https://github.com/versluis/Zen-Dash