Update the Copyright Date on Your Website

It's hard to believe that it's already 2012!

As we enter the new year, don't forget to update the copyright date on your blog and website. Having an old copyright makes your site look out of date.

If your site has been in existence for several years, use a range of dates. My copyright notice is listed in the "About This Site" section at the bottom of the right column, and it reads "Copyright 2008-2012 by Texana Publishing Consultants, LLC."

Comments

[Dee for D.I. Telbat]

Thank you for this important reminder and tip, Dana! I don't know how long it would have been until I remembered to do this! :)

[Adan Lerma]

needed that reminder, thank you - happy new year ;-)

[Marta_Daniels]

How important is this? Are there any real consequences to neglecting to do this?

[Peter DeHaan]

Interestingly, I just finished updating the copyright notice on all my websites (I have 16 or so).

Next I need to update the notice on my blogs (I have 5),

Believe it or not, this is something that I normally do on January first, but with it falling on a Sunday, my normal New Year's Day routine was a bit messed up.

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Wow, Peter, that's a lot of websites! Glad you got them all updated.

Marta, having an old copyright date on a website looks bad to visitors - it gives the appearance that the site hasn't been updated in a long time. If you are asking about the legal consequences of having an old or no copyright date on a website, you'd need to ask an attorney about that. But I do think that a copyright notice helps to remind people that your information is copyrighted and they shouldn't copy it.

[Damian Gostomski]

I've written a short PHP snippet which will automate this, so all you enter is the start date, and then it will display it as just that year, or that year to the current one if applicable

Check it out at http://www.gostomski.co.uk/snippet/better-auto-updating-copyright-date