Do you need a copyright symbol?
You technically don’t need a copyright to protect yourself but it is a reminder that your work is just not free for the taking and the thought is that in court it’s much harder for a person to claim they didn’t realize they couldn’t use your work if you have the copyright notice visible on your site.
One little detail that I see often overlooked is the date in the footer. People will put a copyright there with just one year – the year the site was created. But a website and especially a blog is constantly changing so therefore it should have a copyright range because all of your work is protected from the first design to the last design.
It’s amazing how fast those years roll around and before you know you have to update the year! Below is a bit of code that I use on my sites that I develop that puts the current year on your site. So all you have to do is put it in the footer of your website and forget about it!
Javascript for a simple website
© 1997 – <script type=”text/javascript”> year = new Date();document.write(year.getFullYear());
</script> Eloine’s Design Services. All rights reserved.
Or PHP for adding to a self hosted wordpress blog
Search for the footer file in the edit tab under appearance and insert and edit the line below
[php] © Eloine Chapman&amp;#8217;s Graphic Design Services. 1997 – &lt;script type=”text/javascript”&gt; year = new Date();
document.write(year.getFullYear()); [/php]
Scroll to the bottom of this post and you’ll see what it produces.