Configure the footer

How to edit your footer (columns, widgets, legal lines, social links)

The Footer panel is where every site-wide footer change lives. It owns the column layout, embedded widgets (paragraph text, maps, images, code blocks), and the small legal/copyright strip at the bottom.

What is this for?

Footer config is the site-wide footer skin editor. Use it when you want one change to show on every page — the copyright year, the social links, the "About us" paragraph, the embedded Google Map. It is not a per-page widget; nothing set here shows only on one page.

Good use cases

Example 1: Build out Acme Coffee's 4-column footer. About paragraph, Shop links, Legal, Social icons. Set column count to 4, expand each column, populate, Save Changes.

Acme's populated footer form:

On save:

Example 2: Embed a Google Map in a contact column. Drop an Embed URL widget into column 3, paste the Maps embed HTML, Save Changes. Every page's footer shows the Acme roastery on a map.

The snippet Acme pastes into the Embed widget:

<iframe  src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d2794.4!2d-122.67!3d45.52!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x0%3A0x0!2sAcme+Coffee+Roasters"  width="100%"  height="320"  style="border:0"  allowfullscreen=""  loading="lazy">
</iframe>

Example 3: Update the copyright year site-wide. Open the legal strip, change © 2025 to © 2026, Save Changes. Every page's footer updates on next reload — no per-page edits needed.

What Acme's footer looks like rendered:

What NOT to use this for

• Do not use Footer to edit the main navigation. Even if a small "sitemap" link list sits in a footer column, the primary nav is built under Appearance → Menu and assigned to the Footer location. Edit it there.
• Always wait for the page to finish loading before you click Save Changes. The widget text areas are filled in by the page itself after it finishes loading. If you save too early, empty widget text areas overwrite your saved content. Give the page a moment to settle, then click Save Changes.
• Do not use the standalone Widgets page to edit footer widgets. The widget editor embedded in Footer is the working path. (The standalone Appearance → Widgets page is currently non-functional — see "Manage widgets" for details.)

How this connects to other features

• Widgets — the widget editor that the standalone Widgets page should host actually lives inside Footer config. Edit paragraph/image/code/embed widgets here.
• Menu — the "Footer" location on the Menu panel fills any column you have configured to render the site nav.
• Media Library — image widgets reference assets in Media; upload images there first.
• Templates — the footer template (active Footer template) is the outer shell that wraps whatever Footer config produces.

Before you start

• Your logo, social icons, and footer images are already in the Media Library.
• The main footer menu (if any) is already built under Appearance → Menu with the "Footer" location ticked.
• You know to wait for the footer page to fully load before clicking Save Changes, so no widget text areas are still blank.

Where to go

1. Open the left navigation.
2. Click Appearance → Theme Editor → Footer tab.

Steps

1. Pick the column count

Footer supports 1–6 columns. Change the column count control at the top of the panel; existing columns keep their content when the count goes up; content in dropped columns is lost.

2. Edit a column

Click any column header to expand it. Inside each column you can place:

• Paragraph — rich text with bold / italic / links.
• Image — picks from the Media Library.
• Embed URL — Google Maps, YouTube, or any embeddable iframe source.
• Code — raw HTML / script.

3. Edit the legal strip

Below the columns, the legal row owns the thin strip at the very bottom of the footer. Typical content: copyright year, "Powered by" line, privacy policy link.

4. Save Changes

The footer re-renders on every public page on next load.

What success looks like

• The public site reloads with the new footer layout and content.
• Widget content (paragraph text, embedded maps) renders as you entered it.

What to do if it does not work

• My widget content disappeared after a save. Refresh the Footer page, wait two to three seconds for JavaScript to fully hydrate all widget textareas before clicking Save. If content was wiped, you'll need to re-enter it. Do not script footer saves from cold HTML.
• The footer still shows the old text. Hard-reload (Ctrl+Shift+R). Footers are aggressively cached.
• My new image does not show up. Confirm the Media Library entry is live and the public URL loads in a new tab; if not, re-upload.

Next step