Automatically Update Your Copyright Year in Squarespace
You probably have a copyright notice in your website footer that looks something like this:
@2022 - 2025 Your Business Name. All rights reserved.
If you don’t have one of these, you should! I am NOT a lawyer, so this is not legal advice, but lawyers do recommend having a copyright notice on the bottom of your website. Although anything you create is legally yours as soon as it’s published, this public notice could give you a little more protection if someone DOES try to steal your creations. TermsFeed has more information about about copyright notices from legal experts.
What Date(s) Should Your Website Copyright Include?
You should include a range of years in your website copyright from the year your website was published to the current year. Why? Your copyright notice should cover ALL of the years that content was created or updated and needs to be protected. Even if you NEVER update your website after its published (don’t do that!), updating the copywrite year sends a signal to visitors that your business/organization/project is active and your website is up to date. This is important.
FYI, the “All Rights Reserved” part of the copywrite is optional, because it’s implied by the copyright symbol itself (so the lawyers say), but it doesn’t hurt to include it, so I do!
Code to Automatically Update Your Website Footer Copywrite Year
You can set a calendar reminder to manually edit your copyright date every year OR you can use the code below that will automatically ensure your copyright date includes the current year.
To apply this code in Squarespace, you need to use a Markdown block. This block is available on all Squarespace plans. Add the Markdown block in your website footer where you would like your copyright to be displayed and copy/paste one of the following code snippets into the Markdown block.
To include just the CURRENT YEAR in your copyright notice
@2025 Your Business Name. All rights reserved.
Use this code:
<p style="text-align: left;font-size: 80%;">©<script>document.write(new Date().getFullYear())</script> Your Business Name. All rights reserved.</p>
To include a RANGE of years (YYYY - current year) in your copyright notice
@2022 - 2025 Your Business Name. All rights reserved.
Use this code:
<p style="text-align: left;font-size: 80%;">©YYYY - <script>document.write(new Date().getFullYear())</script> Your Business Name. All rights reserved.</p>
You can adjust the styling of the text by adjusting these parameters in the style tag
Text-align: left Change “left” to “center” or “right” alignment as needed
Font-size: 80% Change the % to adjust the size of the text to match the rest of your footer text
(Shout out to Kerstin Martin who first taught me a version of this code in a course I took from her a while back. I highly recommend Kerstin’s courses! Check them out if you are a small business owner or course creator.)
The Net-Net
With just a small code snippet in a Squarespace markdown block, you can ensure your website copyright date is always current. This sends a signal to your website visitors that you have your stuff together and your website is up to date!
