New Year’s Eve for Webmasters

by Scott Jangro on 31 December 2007

It’s New Year’s Eve. Have you thought about what your website is going to look like tomorrow?

The most common new year gaffe appears in the footer of thousands and thousands of websites, an outdated copyright notice.

Webmasters dutifully put the copyright message in the footer of their website template, but most hard-code the text, so that with the new year it must be updated.

THIS year when you update it, solve the problem permanently. Put some code in to automatically put the current year in the footer.

Using PHP, it’s as simple as this:

&copy; 2001-<?php echo date("Y") ?> Company Name

I don’t know if there is an official format for that Copyright text, or if it is even required at all. I usually just go look at the website of a company that I how has LOTS of lawyers and use their format.

I’m also taking this opportunity to get Google Analytics set up on many of my domains to start off with a full year of data.

What other new year rituals do you webmasters have that I should be thinking about?

Happy New Year!

  • Thanks for the reminder, I totally forgot!

    This is the last year I will be doing it since it's no longer hard-coded.
  • LOL, thanks for the reminder. Yes, I'm one of those webmasters who hardcoded the copyright notice in the footer. Funny thing, I have it computed in meta tags :D
  • Great idea. I copies the code, only to find out something like it was already in my blog's footer.

    Thanks anyway.
  • Scott
    Stevie the K, I certainly wasn't suggesting that "webmasters" forgo their first night activities to do this work.

    There was plenty of time during the day for this!
  • Maybe I'm old fashioned, but perhaps some "webmasters" settle in for a nice evening with their loved ones... a little champagne...etc.

    Just sayin'.
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