How to Remove “Powered by…” in WordPress, Shopify, and Squarespace

Wondering how to remove “Powered by Shopify or Squarespace”? Want to know how to get rid of “Powered by WordPress?” We’ll show you.

In this post, we answer a question often asked by owners of online stores and blogs based on different content management systems “How to remove the ‘Powered by…’ credits in the footer of a free theme?” We explain the main reasons why keeping this reference is not a good idea, especially when it comes to e-commerce. Then, we describe the tried-and-tested techniques you can apply to remove this link in WordPress, Shopify, and Squarespace.

We at GetDevDone are e-commerce development experts with over 16 years of experience under our belts. We know everything about the major e-commerce platforms. Not all of them are free. Most, however, provide free themes that users can install on their online stores or blogs.

While free does mean ‘without having to pay’ anything, there’s one thing that many users are unhappy about: the “Powered by…” credits (the wording can slightly differ from platform to platform) at the bottom of their sites.

Every free theme comes with it, regardless of the specific system: WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, or another. Some third-party themes can also include a reference to the theme developer.

The Most Typical Reasons for Site Owners to Remove the Default “Powered by…” Credits

If you’re an online store or blog owner we recommend that you do away with this text as soon as possible. Here is why.

1. The “Powered by…” link can serve as an invitation for hackers to get inside your site and explore its internal structure. That’s a burning issue for self-hosted platforms such as WordPress.
2. When visitors to your online store see “Powered by…” alongside your brand, this may baffle them. They may wonder which brand this site actually belongs to. When you get rid of this link, on the other hand, your brand message sounds loud and clear, with no other parties involved. This instills trust with your visitors.
3. A website without the “Powered by…” credits looks more solid, especially if the owner adds a reference to the designer and developer who have built it.

Can you remove “Powered by…”? Yes, you can. Moreover, it isn’t difficult at all if you know where to look and what to do.

Below, we have described the most common methods to free your site from the “Powered by…” credits on three popular platforms: WordPress, Shopify, and Squarespace. Before we actually get down to the instructions, there are a couple of important considerations to keep in mind.

What You Need to Know Before You Get Rid of the “Powered by…” Link

1. You can remove the “Powered by…” credits without fearing legal ramifications. This relates to all the systems we discuss in this post. Thus, if you’re afraid that you’ll get subjected to some sort of penalties after deleting the link, don’t.
2. When you ask the question, ‘How to remove ‘Powered by WordPress?’ and someone tells you to use CSS, we recommend that you ignore this advice.There’s no denying: this is a relatively simple and quick method of making the “Powered by…” credits disappear from your site. All you have to do is find the respective HTML element (with either a class or id attached) in the theme’s stylesheet and add the CSS rule ‘{display: none}’ to the element’s description.

   As a result, the credits will no longer be visible in the footer. This simplicity comes at a cost, though. By applying CSS, you only HIDE the reference from Bing and the like, not DELETE it.

   You’ll become an enemy to search engines. When you try to hide links from them, they immediately put you on the “suspicious sites” list. From now on, forget about high search engine rankings. This can be particularly painful for online store owners.

Instead of using CSS to stop the “Powered by…” link from being displayed, consider more reliable ways to achieve the goal. To help you out, we’ve picked one method for each of the three platforms listed in the post title. Without further ado, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty.

How to Remove “Powered by WordPress”

You certainly know how important it is to please search engines if you want Internet users to find your blog or online store quickly. This is why the method to delete the “Powered by WordPress” credits we suggest is the best from an SEO perspective.

It does require a technical background, but if you follow the instructions precisely, you’ll keep your search engine rankings intact and free your footer from the “Powered by…” link at the same time.

IMPORTANT!

1. Back up all your website files first. Check out this post for some effective solutions to handle the task.
2. Build a child theme and modify its code instead of doing this directly in the main theme of your website. This will enable you to:
   • keep the changes you’ve made when WP updates are rolled out.
   • ensure that your main theme works fine should you accidentally make a mistake while editing the code in the child theme.

Visit the official WP guide for more information on creating child themes.

Now, here’s how to get rid of “Powered by WordPress” by modifying the core code:

1. Use an SFTP client to establish a connection with your website. If you’re a MacOS user, you might consider installing Transmit, for example. Why not edit your files straight from the WP admin area? The thing is that certain hosting providers block this function due to security concerns.
2. Find and open the public_html/wp-content/themes folder.
3. Find the folder with the theme that contains the default “Powered by…” credits and open it.
4. Find the document called footer.php. 
5. Copy footer.php and insert it into the folder with your child theme.
6. Use a text editing program such as Notepad++ to open footer.php.
7. Search for the place with “Proudly powered by…” within the code. You can use the standard Ctrl+F key combination for this purpose. You’ll need to delete not only the words “Proudly powered by …” but the whole surrounding HTML tag, as shown in the screenshot.
8. Save the document. The credits should be gone for good.

This is how you can remove “Proudly powered by WordPress” right inside the theme code. If you find this method complicated, our WordPress developers are always ready to assist you with this task.

How to Remove “Powered by Squarespace”

Squarespace is another popular website builder that displays the default “Powered by…” link in the website footer. Here are the steps to get rid of it:

1. Sign in to your Squarespace account.
2. Choose the website with the credits that you want to delete.
3. Click EDIT at the top.
4. Scroll down to the ‘Made with Squarespace’ element.
5. Click the element. The corresponding footer editor will appear.
6. Click again on the text so that you have the text cursor positioned on it. Select the “Made with Squarespace” text. Delete the line.
7. Mouse over “Done” at the top of the page and select “Save” in the dropdown. The credits should be gone now.

As is the case with WordPress, our Squarespace developers are just a few clicks away from showing you how to get rid of “Powered by Squarespace” (“Made with Squarespace”) or fix any problem you might experience.

How to Remove “Powered by Shopify”

As far as Shopify is concerned, we suggest following the manual path to do away with the default credits. This is not the quickest way but is the most effective to delete the “Powered by Shopify” link once and for all. It’s also the right decision from an SEO standpoint. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Open the Shopify dashboard.
2. From the sidebar on the left, find the Online Store option and select it. This will also select the Themes sub-option.
3. Go to Current Theme.
4. Select Actions.
5. Choose the Edit Code option from the dropdown. This will reveal your current theme’s code.
6. From the sidebar on the left, select the Sections folder.
7. Find footer.liquid further down the list.
8. Use the standard key combination CTRL+F to bring up the search box.
9. Enter powered_by_link into the box. This will highlight one or several lines of code (differs from theme to theme).
10. Remove the powered_by_link within double curly braces throughout the code. That is, ‘{{powered_by_link}}’.
11. Click the Save button at the top of the section on the right.

Congratulations! You’ve learned how to get rid of “Powered by Shopify.” Should you need any assistance with this process, our Shopify developers are always at your service.

To Sum Up

The “Powered by…” text displayed in the footer of websites based on most content management systems can be detrimental to the success of a blog or online store. It can represent a security threat, confuse shoppers, or make a website look amateurish.
Thus, we recommend removing this link or replacing it with your own. To do that, follow the guidelines above depending on your platform.

GetDevDone is a web design and development company that provides a wide range of e-commerce development services, covering the major content management platforms: WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Drupal, Magento, and more.

Need someone to handle your e-commerce project? Talk to us. Our primary goal is to help your business grow and thrive.