How to Remove Encrypted Footer Links From WordPress Themes

1. Log in to your WordPress admin area. Click 'Appearance' from the large menu on the left, then click 'Editor.' The theme editor allows you to edit the theme's HTML files. Under normal circumstances, you could just go to 'footer.php' and delete the links in question; however, with encrypted links, this may cause the entire site to stop functioning. To get around this, you must replace the 'footer.php' file completely.
2. Click on 'index.php' and scroll to the bottom of the file. Locate the following line of code:
This tells WordPress to run all the code in the 'footer.php' file. Add the following lines of code above and below this line:


These are comment tags -- the site will ignore everything between the '
' tags. Click 'Update File' when done.

3. Load up your blog's main index page in a browser. Click 'View,' then 'View Source.' The HTML source code for this page appears. Scroll down and find the 'FooterStart' and 'FooterEnd' comment tags you just inserted. Copy all the code between these two tags to the clipboard.
4. Return to your WordPress admin window. While still in the Theme Editor, click 'footer.php' from the list on the right. Delete all the code in the file, then paste in the code you just copied.
5. Locate the links. In HTML, links look like this: '
Anchor text
'. Delete all the links that you want to remove, then click 'Update File.'