Appearance → Customize → Footer. The line at the very bottom of every page is built from three pieces, in order, each with its own setting.
(c) 2026. The Clarion. All rights reserved. Powered by Owldraft
________/ _______________________________/ _________________/
prefix Copyright text theme credit
Show © + year
On by default. Prints © and the current year, from your site’s timezone (Settings → General). The year is generated, not stored, so it does not need updating each January.
Turn it off if your own text already carries a copyright notice, or if you use a Creative Commons licence instead and want to say so in your own words.
Copyright text
Empty by default. Whatever you type goes here, and HTML is allowed — so a link works:
The Clarion. Text licensed <a href="/licence/">CC BY 4.0</a>.
A few lines worth considering, depending on what you publish:
All rights reserved. | the conventional one |
Published in Bristol. | a place, on a local news site |
Text CC BY-SA. Photographs by their authors. | when the licence differs by medium |
Registered charity 1234567. | where the law requires it |
If you run a news site in a jurisdiction that requires an imprint — Germany’s Impressum, for instance — link to it from here and from the footer menu.
Keep theme credit
On by default. Prints Powered by Owldraft, linked to owldraft.com.
You may turn it off. Stoat is GPL, and the GPL does not require you to keep an attribution line; the switch is there precisely so you do not have to edit a template to remove it. Leaving it on is appreciated and is how small themes get found, but it is your call and there is no nagging either way.
The footer menu beside it
If a menu is assigned to the Footer Menu location, it sits alongside this line. With no menu assigned, the copyright has the row to itself.
Width
The footer follows whatever width the content above it resolved to — a Full page gets a full-width footer, a Narrow post a narrow one — so the two always line up. See narrow or full.