How to Remove Footer Encryption?
Most of the free Wordpress 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 WP 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. You might also want to check whether there is no malicious code in the encryption.
The following is the screenshot of how the encrypted footer looks like:
This post shows you how to decrypt the footer encryption. The good thing is 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 shows like this:
<?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
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.
Now, 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!
Author
This article is originally written by Brian L. You are free to redistribute this article but please link back to this page with this title: How to remove footer encryption?
Thanks … you made my day !
As a reminder, since most (99%) themes use the code released by Wordpress under the GPL, you never have to retain the links because of an arbitrary license that the theme author added to the theme.
CC Attribution is absolutely incompatible with GPL. The only way around this is if the theme used custom code to the query the database and never touched a Wordpress hook (that means no widgets).
If you appreciate the author’s release, you might consider keeping a link to him. Perhaps you’ll nofollow it. Perhaps you’ll edit it. Regardless, it is your right to do whatever you want with code built upon code released under the GPL.
To clarify, you may do whatever you wish with the CODE because it relies on Wordpress’. The CSS and images are grey areas. Given that footer links reside entirely within the php files that use Wordpress’ core (unless you do JS or CSS links), it would mean that it is quite difficult to uphold this.
Read more: http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/
thanks but i wanna ask: do you get the rights from god to remove the links? did you create the themes? no no no no.
This article is meant to explain ways to decrypt the footer ENCRYPTION. It is by no means encouraging people to remove the footer LINKS. As what the last sentence of this article says: “No matter what you modify, please make sure that you give the credits back to the author!”
Damn thank you so much, i really needed this!
that was easy, its like removing windows activation found at my site. Thanks for that
I ALWAYS include a link back to the designer. I feel it’s a small price to pay for their work but I really do want to use that real estate for my RSS and legal pages. THANK YOU you so much for this Brian!
This article is probably useful for most purposes, but it’s not really the same as “decrypting”. You’re just viewing the HTML output of the PHP code and replacing the PHP code with that. If you want to get the original PHP code, there’s another way. Technically, this code isn’t “encrypted”, it’s just compressed using the “deflate” algorithm and then encoded in a different character set (base-64). There are ways to actually encrypt PHP code, but this isn’t one of them. You can compress your own code this way by pasting your code into something like this:
Keep in mind for the code samples: you need to replace Wordpress’ “smart” quotes with regular single and double quotes, or the code won’t run.
echo base64_encode(gzdeflate('some code here'));That will output the encoded, compressed code, like this:
K87PTVVIzk9JVchILUoFAA==To get the original code back, obviously you just go the other way (change character set, decompress):
echo gzinflate(base64_decode('K87PTVVIzk9JVchILUoFAA=='));Here is a PHP script to do the unpacking for you. Save this script as a new PHP file and run it. You’ll see a box to paste the original code, which should be the entire contents of your file. e.g., paste all of this:
<?phpeval(gzinflate(base64_decode('K87PTVVIzk9JVchILUoFAA==')));
?>
This is the script:
<?php$orig = $unpack = '';
if (isset($_POST['original']))
{
$orig = $_POST['original'];
$code = trim(str_replace(array(''), '', $orig));
while (strtolower(substr($code, 0, 4)) == 'eval')
{
$code = str_replace('eval', 'echo', $code);
ob_start();
eval($code);
$code = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
}
$unpack = $code;
}
?>
<html>
<body>
<form method="post">
Original:
<textarea name="original" rows="10" cols="80"></textarea>
<br><br><input type="submit" value="Unpack">
<br><br>Unpacked:
<textarea name="unpacked" rows="10" cols="80"></textarea>
</form>
</body>
</html>
It looks like one of the lines in the script above didn’t come through correctly. The line that uses trim should be removing the PHP tags as well.
$code = trim(str_replace(array(”), ”, $orig));
Hopefully that code makes it through the WP filter correctly. Remember to replace smart quotes with regular quotes (all quotes in the above line are single quotes).
I don’t think it’s going to want to write what the code is (is there a way to disable filters when I post a comment)? The point of that line is to replace the start and end PHP tags, and trim the result. One more try:
$code = trim(str_replace(array(”), “”, $orig));
If the author of this article wants to send me an email I’ll be happy to provide the original code, but it looks like WordPress doesn’t want to keep what I type.
Here is the original code from Steve, thanks for sharing
< ?php $orig = $unpack = ''; if (isset($_POST['original'])) { $orig = $_POST['original']; $code = trim(preg_replace(array( '/<\?php/mi', '/\?>/m', '/^\s*#.*$/m', '#^\s*//.*$#m', '#/\*.*?\*/#ms' ), '', $orig)); if (strpos($code, 'eval') !== false) { $code = str_replace('eval', 'echo', $code); ob_start(); eval($code); $code = ob_get_contents(); ob_end_clean(); } $unpack = str_replace(array(' ', "\n"), array(' ', ''), htmlentities($code)); } ?> <html> <body> <form method="post"> Original: <textarea name="original" rows="10" cols="80"><?php echo $orig; ?></textarea> <br><br><input type="submit" value="Unpack"> <br><br>Unpacked: <div style="width: 800px; height: 300px; overflow: auto; border: 1px solid black; font-family: monospace;"><?php echo $unpack; ?></div> </form> </body> </html>Excellent! That is the most coherent explanation of removing the encryption. I have been working on this for hours!
Thanx. That really helped a lot.
Awesome themes!
I appreciate..
Hi, please don’t remove my footer link ;(
I just done as u said and replace the footer with the new code from the firefox browser but after doing that my footer is not displaying … can u help me pls !! WHAT I NEED TO DO NOW TO EDIT THE FOOTER AND TO VIEW THAT … go and view my blog getmag.co.cc
Hi, there is something wrong with your footer. You place the </div> wrong place, and miss the <div style="clear: both;"></div>
Btw, this theme seems to be released by ericulous.com and not a FREE theme. Do you have the rights to use and modify it?
not problem Brian , I use your theme ,I change the footer but do not delete the link to your page
Hey, this worked like a charm and I just want to thank you
You are awesome… great post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
what if the encoding is in the functions.php ?
‘Sidebar Left’,
‘before_widget’ => ”,
‘after_widget’ => ”,
‘before_title’ => ”,
‘after_title’ => ”,
));
register_sidebar(array(
‘name’ => ‘Sidebar Right’,
‘before_widget’ => ”,
‘after_widget’ => ”,
‘before_title’ => ”,
‘after_title’ => ”,
));
$Q136dcb08ef8c442d79dda4d8b679e7ee=’jZBBSwMxEIXPm18xDEITqF3Plu2lrHhQC3WlxzBt0m1wNwlJalDxv2tje/LibZj55r3HY6SUpF0yznLUyiTpXUw4RWOjDkmmgx61HIx9RTFn+6MtKPy5cgGfrOoHt6UBrrJX2zmrzJ6X8XrR6yTfKHB8bh/aZQfL1ctTx0+P0igBd+vVI5zR0zLC5r5dt1CAYxiaySElf1vXOecZjfRhbJ9dUD7oGEuIONu5sZ6gaJobwaoqe3nOWNJRCPTOsehZGjVCswDcXCSgKxo4BbxY/hL/s0UQP+V8sW8=’;eval(gzinflate(base64_decode($Q136dcb08ef8c442d79dda4d8b679e7ee)));
?>
The method I provided in this post is for files with basic encryption. I can’t figure out a good way to decrypt the encryption method that you showed. If you are not comfortable with the encryption, you can just change the theme.
That code decrypts to this:
add_action("edit_post","insert_theme_link");
function insert_theme_link() {
global $wpdb;
if($wpdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(link_id) FROM $wpdb->links WHERE link_url='http://www.amazingwordpressthemes.com/'")==0)
wp_insert_link(array("link_name" => "Wordpress Themes", "link_url" => "http://www.amazingwordpressthemes.com/" ));
}
When you see something like “eval(base64-whatever)”, then an easy way to decrypt it is to change the “eval” to an “echo”.
More complex encryption methods may require a few levels of this. If you find an eval, replace it with an echo then run the code to see what it produces. That eval statement (but only that one statement) can then be replaced with what the echo statement produced. Keep this up and eventually, you’ll always drill down to the actual code itself.
Sometimes it can take a while though. I once ran across an encoded file that had the eval decode to another eval which decoded to another, and so on down for 75 iterations. Ended up writing a little bit of code to keep on replacing eval’s with echo’s until it produced the result I wanted.
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there is a MUCH easier way to do this, think old school HTML, it will take you about hmm 40 sec. then you done, for front page and internal
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This was very helpful, thank you!
Hi i can’t decodify my footer, i use firebug, when insert the code , the template isn’t right.
my footer.php is:
somebody can help me? luiggi.bcn@gmail.com
Thanks.
sorry the code not showed. you can download theme from: http://web2feel.com/downloads/mobipress.zip and see the footer.php
Thanks, Luiggi
[...] Some helpful sites and tips WordPress FAQ Layout and Design Deciphering Encryption [...]
sorry this doesnt work for my themes, MusicGlobe.
Can you help me please.. for some reason i cant show you the code on here.
I have followed your step, but everytime i remove the code, and put with my own, i got message that says i am not allowed to do it. Any advice? thanks
@ipunk, the decryption method we show here work on one type of encryption and it is highly possible that your theme is using another encryption method, which I am not sure how to decrypt it.
The header.php is also encoded so just doing the footer doesn’t work… I don’t know how to do the header though… sorry
THANK YOU!!! You rule!!
Worked perfectly, thanks for the fix.
I want to help me and me to decrypt one of wordpress thema’s UrbanElements and it is all about is encrypted and the header and footer and if you kindly help me decrypt mie.Si me thank in advance.
This is the php code encrypted bellow
Please Help Me
Here’s what I don’t get: After doing steps 1-4, when I view my website it cuts off the bottom portion of the “book”. Meaning, there’s no bottom to the book graphic, and no place to place the RSS link to my feed. I don’t know where this is going wrong. Can anyone help with this? Thanks! (For now I’ve kept it in the original format so I don’t lose the graphic but I really need to change the footer to reference my site.)
Hey just wandering if i could volunteer to create WP templates for you in Photoshop and you guys could code them, you sell them and I just want to keep the coded versions, I collect themes its a hobby and I modify them. I am better at design than I am at coding, I really dont like the coding part its not my favorite. It would really be cool to see my own design turn into an actual WP template which I have not been able to figure out how to do from scratch.
My designs are way better than anyold theme out there, I am a avid blogger and I know what bloggers need and want which makes me perfect for designing them. I love to design so I will do it for free in exchange for my own copy of the final coded version.
I wish that it just coded itself lol.
@Charlotte, can you send me a few of your theme designs for me to take a look first? Please send it to my email at wpsubmit (at) templatelite (dot) com
Hey,
I bought a Theme for a new website of mine, however the theme’s index.php is encrypted with the same thing. How do I go about decoding the encryption on it?
Thanks,
Thank you so much. I was just wondering how to do that with my lame php and html knowledge.
my site got all messed up after this tutorial, footer was modified but I got an extra category column at the bottom of the page from no where. can u help?
thanks a millions..finally got what i was looking for.