Most of the free themes out there are having Creative Commons Attribute 2.0+ License. This means that you can modify the theme in anyway you want but you have to attribute the work in the manner specified by the author.

If you download the free themes from other sites using this type of license, you’ll notice that most of them have the footer section encrypted.

Many of you would like the freedom to change how the footer looks. With an encrypted footer, you can’t change things like adding a “Contact” link or an RSS button.

This post shows you how to remove the footer encryption. You don’t need any decoding software nor programming skill in order to do that.

Sounds simple. Yes it is! Please follow the few steps below to remove the footer encryption:

Step 1
Open index.php
Find the include code for the footer. Normally, the footer include code is as follows:

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Step 2
Add this comment code on the top and bottom of the footer code:

<!–Footer code starts here–>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

<!–Footer code ends here–>

Save the file and upload it to the server.

Step 3
Load the theme in a browser. View the source code by clicking
Page -> View Source (If you view in IE) or
Ctrl + U (If you view in Firefox)

Step 4
The source code in between <!–Footer code starts here–> and <!–Footer code ends here–> is the source code for the footer.

Open footer.php and replace the encrypted code with the actual source code.

You can then start to modify the footer in anyway you want.

No matter what you modify, please make sure that you give the credits back to the author!