I'd like to learn what information all of you webmasters like to put in the "fine print" of your footers. Stuff like copyright declarations and etc.

What information do you feel is important to include, and why?

What information do you see in other people's footers which you feel is useless, and why?

If you use one, what should a copyright declaration contain and how do you word yours? What year(s) do you use following the copyright symbol: the year the site was launched, the current year, or both (e.g., 2000 - 2007)?

I don't really want this to be a thread about whether or not to use plain-text site-navigation links in the footer. (I think that's a good practice, but that would belong in another thread.) However, if you feel that certain in-site links belong in the footer and nowhere else, I'd like to hear about that (e.g, 'contact the webmaster'; 'privacy policy'; etc.).

Please let me know: What's in YOUR footer?

The footer on my site is a bit different from what I have seen on other sites. I have the traditional copyright notice - in my case © [current year] [company name] All rights reserved. followed by an industry specific disclaimer. I also include in the footer area a series of seals for various certifications - Hacker Safe, Truste, Versign, etc. Being an e-commerce site, establishing trust with the customer early on is important to us, and having these seals visible on every page of the site helps establish that trust and has had a small improvement in our overall conversion rate.

We use the current year in our copyright notices because our site changes and evolves quite rapidly, and we felt that putting the year the site was launched (1993 for the original design, 2006 for the current design) might make the site seem outdated. There is an emphasis in our business on having the most current information, although we are still debating adding the original date of the site to show we are an established, long standing business.

__________________
The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.

If you have been around for a long time, placing "Copyright 1996 - 2007" is an innocent but effective way of letting your users know you are not brand new. Also, just to CYOA, you migh want to place the verbiage: "Other Trademarks, tradenames, and product names are the property of their respective holders" This prevents you from listing every trademark and tradename used on your site, like Kleenex.


*Kleenex is a trademark of Kimberly-Clarke Worldwide Inc.

__________________
Accept Credit Cards Anywhere!
www.merchantanywhere.com

Links to other pages within my site allow me to have navigation on 3 sides of every page.

My footers have links to my main categories and customer service pages as well as links to articles creating secondary navigation as well as internal links from the page with the highest PR, the index page.

__________________
Glynn Gallagher aka "RED"
lock picks, locksmith tools

Here is my footer.......it has the same navigation links as the top of the page so people don't have to scroll all the way up, plus the additional contact us, etc. that are not at the top of the pages.

USE THE LINKS BELOW TO VISIT ANY SECTION OF HAPPY DAY CARDS

HOME PAGE -- HOLIDAY CARDS -- ALL OCCASION CARDS -- KIDS CARDS -- THOUGHTS -- STORIES -- CRITTER CARDS -- NEWSLETTER -- EARTH CARDS -- RED HAT DIVA CARDS -- HEALTHY RECIPES -- LINKS, CONTACT, INFO -- SEARCH

Contact Us / Link To Us / Terms Of Use / Privacy Policy / Site Map
-----------------------------------

On individual card and category pages I also use this line just above the footer:

The URL of this individual page is http://www.happydaycards.com/thoughts/Itsagoodthing.html

I have copyright notices in various places around my web site, but not on every page.

__________________
The Weedy Lady at
http://www.happydaycards.com
Free E Cards for holidays and all occasions, fun pages and great recipes.

In addition to normal stuff like Copyright, Privacy Policy etc. I add HTML links to important pages on my website that the visitor visiting the page might be interested in. Many times the link menu is made using Flash, hence HTML links in the foots helps Google and it helps the visitors and you too.

Sanjay Verma

Thanks, all, for your thoughts and reasoning so far. Hope you don't mind if I make this one blanket "thank you" to all of you. I hope this thread will be interesting and useful to many. Please keep the information coming!

- hommealone

On some of my sites I put copyright plus the current year and links to legal disclaimers

__________________
You'll love this free traffic site...now it's getting me 2,000 targeted hits every day.
http://www.traffficswarm.com/wpw.html

I concur with advancedmerchant - if you've been in business for a while, it's a good thing to have your starting date so that people can see how long you've been in business. Our company has been in business for 18 years and we've started putting "Since 1989" on our literature to drive home that we've been in our particular market for a while. In fact, I think our type of company is one of the OLDEST (in the 3rd-party endoscopy repair/sales service).

I'm also planning on updating our footer with the "Other Trademarks, tradenames, and product names are the property of their respective holders" since we do advertise other company products that we sell. Thanks for that bit of information, advancedmerchant.

__________________
~Mark G.
Graphic Designer - Endoscopy Support Services, Inc.

I can't understand, most of the webmasters write copyright as well as disclaimer in their footer but I could not find disclaimer page on their website. To me it looks like a traditional addition for webmasters to write copyright and disclaimer in their footer.
Can anyone tell me is it right or wrong? If wrong why such common practice it has become?

Why would a separate "disclaimer" page be needed, when the Disclaimer itself is self-contained?

The Disclaimer, i.e. wording similar to "Other Trademarks, Service Marks, Trade Names, and product names are the property of their respective holders" avoids the need to explicitly name each and every mark that may be used on the site that is not held by the owner of the site.

Thus, having said "I claim these named marks as belonging to me," the disclaimer then simply says that "any other marks appearing here do not belong to me." With that, there is no need for more. And, one need not be concerned as to which marks belonging to others might appear on the site in the future, as they too are included in the generic disclaimer.

__________________
The Penn State Ticket Man http://www.pennstateticketman.com
http://www.happyvalleytickets.com http://www.hounddogtours.com

© 2007 Emmaus Designs. All rights reserved. [Validation HTML] [Validation CSS]

__________________
Emmaus Designs | Emmaus Domains | My SEO Planet

Glad to see this thread's still active!

I put a "Website by" link to my own site, when the client allows. (Very last line.)

I try to put a "Contact the webmaster" link (usually linked to a customized version of the site's contact form) as well. If anyone finds something broken on the site (hasn't happened yet, thankfully!), I'd rather get the message than having the client get it!

I agree with flsurfkarma, and put W3C Valid (X)HTML and Valid CSS seals whenever the site is coded well enough (again, depends on the client - and whether they paid for careful enough coding).

Commonly now I'll put something similar to:
©200X [site owner's corporate name]. Unauthorized use of [site owner's corporate name]'s files is prohibited.

Often I'll put the client's phone # and mailing address right in the footer. Nowadays, who uses a phone book? Visitors come to the site just to get this info sometimes and the footer is the first place to look for it, so it seems like a courtesy - though occasionally you DO want to force them to click around a bit before they find it.

__________________
Insite Website Design and Development

So as to avoid possible dispute re. old content, I suggest using "©200X-200Y," where X & Y = 1st & current yr., respectively.

__________________
The Penn State Ticket Man http://www.pennstateticketman.com
http://www.happyvalleytickets.com http://www.hounddogtours.com

Just the name of the company,then the copyright year, then the name of the developers

__________________

Build Super Profitable Niche Web Sites Fast That Generate Income Streams On Autopilot