Roy 
To edit the footer in WordPress using Elementor, install the free Master Addons plugin, then go to Master Addons → Theme Builder → Footer, click Add New Template, set the display conditions to Entire Site, and choose Edit with Elementor. From there you customize every column, menu, contact detail, and the copyright line with drag-and-drop — no Elementor Pro required.
The footer is the one part of a site nobody thinks about until they have to. Usually it’s a stale copyright year, an old phone number, or a client asking for a column of links you have nowhere to put. And if your theme shipped with a hard-coded footer, you’ve hit the wall already: there’s no real place to edit it, and the Customizer only hands you a sliver of control.
This guide covers every way to edit a footer in WordPress — the native block editor, Customizer, widgets, and footer.php — then walks through the Elementor method in full, including building one from scratch if you don’t have a footer yet. We’ll use the free Master Addons Theme Builder, so you can get a full custom, site-wide footer without paying for Elementor Pro.
Here I have prepared a video tutorial for you if you prefer watching video instead of screenshots –
When you’re done you’ll own every piece of it: columns, logo, menus, contact details, social icons, and the copyright line. All of it edits in the same drag-and-drop Elementor canvas you already use for pages.
In most themes the footer lives inside the template files. A few themes hand you a couple of footer widget areas under Appearance → Widgets or a copyright field in the Customizer, and that’s where it stops. You can’t reorder things, you can’t restyle the layout, and dropping in a new column is off the table unless you start editing PHP.
Elementor’s Theme Builder gets around this by swapping the theme’s footer for an Elementor template you build yourself. The snag is that Elementor’s own footer builder is a Pro feature. That’s the gap Master Addons fills. Its Header, Footer & Comment Builder hands you the same footer-template feature for free, and it works whether you’re on free Elementor or Pro.
Before the Elementor route, it helps to know the options WordPress gives you out of the box, because which one you reach for depends on your theme. Here’s the honest picture:
footer.php in a child theme and edit the markup by hand. Total control, but you’re writing PHP and HTML, one typo can white-screen the site, and a theme update can wipe it if you skipped the child theme.Each of these either boxes you into a specific theme, hands you a sliver of control, or asks you to touch code. That’s exactly why so many people building in Elementor skip all four and use a footer template instead — one visual builder, any theme, no code. Here’s how to set that up.
Three things, none of them cost anything:
A lightweight theme helps here too. A heavy theme can wrap its own markup around the footer area and fight your styling, so if you’re still picking one, our roundup of the best lightweight WordPress themes for Elementor is a good starting point.
Adding a footer and editing one run through the same builder, so let’s build one from scratch first. Already have a footer template sitting there? Jump to the editing section below.
From the WordPress dashboard, head to Master Addons → Theme Builder. Across the top you’ll see tabs: Header, Footer, Comment, Single, Archive, Search, and 404 Page. Click Footer. On a fresh install the list just says “No Templates found,” which is exactly what you want to see right now.
Hit Add New Template up top. A Theme Builder popup opens on the General tab. Because you started from the Footer tab, the Template Type is already set to Footer, so leave it alone.
Give it a name in the Template Title field. Something plain like “Main footer” works, and future-you will thank present-you when there are five templates in the list. Then flip Activation to ON. That’s the switch that tells WordPress to actually use this as the live footer once it’s saved. Skip it and you’ll wonder why nothing shows up on the front end.
Move to the Conditions tab. This decides which pages the footer shows up on. Most sites only need one rule: Include → Entire Site, which drops the footer on every page.
You can stack rules on top of that. Add an Exclude rule and choose from Front Page, Singular, Archive, Search, or 404 Page to keep the footer off certain pages. A common setup: include the whole site, then exclude the front page because the homepage runs its own custom footer.
Click Edit with Elementor. Master Addons saves the template, publishes it, and gives you a shortcode (useful if you ever want to drop the footer somewhere by hand), then opens the Elementor editor with your new template loaded.
The editor opens to an empty section that reads “Drag widget here.” Two ways to fill it:
Importing is the quick route, and the one I’d reach for on a client deadline. The library is stocked with footers you can edit after the fact, and if you want the rest of the site to match, the Template Kits ship headers and footers that already share a look.
Once a footer is on the canvas, editing is plain Elementor: click any element, change it in the left panel. The example below is a footer imported from the library, with a logo, a short description, a Pages menu, a Company Info column, and a Location column.
To change any piece of it:
Contact rows, the phone number and email kind, are usually an Icon List widget. Click it and each line becomes an editable item in the panel. Change the text, swap the icon, or tack on a new line with the + Add Item button. One thing worth doing while you’re there: set the phone line as a real tel: link and the email as a mailto: link so they’re tappable on mobile.
For social icons, the 8 premium icon libraries bundled with Master Addons give you thousands of brand and UI icons to drop straight into the footer, so you’re not bolting on a separate icon plugin just for a row of social links.
The copyright line (“© 2026 Your Company. All rights reserved.”) is nothing fancier than a text or heading widget at the bottom of the footer. Click it, edit the text. Two things worth doing:
When it looks right, hit Publish (or Update) in the bottom-left of the editor. Load any page on the site and the new footer is live everywhere your display conditions said it should be. If it doesn’t appear, the Activation toggle from Step 3 or a too-narrow condition rule is almost always the culprit.
People ask all the time whether the footer needs Elementor Pro. It doesn’t. Here’s the honest split:
| Capability | Free Elementor + Master Addons | Elementor Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Custom site-wide footer template | Yes | Yes |
| Display conditions (include/exclude pages) | Yes | Yes |
| Ready-made footer templates | Yes (Master Addons library) | Yes |
| Header, footer & comment builder | Yes (free) | Pro only |
| Cost | Free | Paid |
For most sites the free combo covers everything a footer needs. If you later want the rest of the theme parts, popups, and 76+ widgets, the Master Addons Pro plans add those on top. The footer editing itself stays free either way.
Theme Builder isn’t a footer-only tool. The same flow builds your header, 404 page, and archive templates, so the whole site shell lives in one place. For the complete walkthrough of every template type, see our full guide on how to use the Elementor Theme Builder for free. Building a matching header next? Our guide on how to create a sticky header in Elementor pairs nicely with a custom footer, and the full footer documentation covers every setting if you want the details.
While you’ve got the site shell open, a few tweaks people usually want at the same moment: removing default page titles in WordPress, making sure the footer reflows cleanly on phones with our Elementor breakpoints responsive design guide, and a pass over SEO best practices for Elementor so the new templates don’t drag the site down. Keeping the build lean matters; here’s how to speed up Elementor websites if it starts feeling heavy.
Install free Elementor and Master Addons, open Master Addons → Theme Builder, add a Footer template, set its display conditions, then click Edit with Elementor. You design and edit the footer with drag-and-drop, and no Elementor Pro is required.
Go to Master Addons → Theme Builder → Footer, click Add New Template, name it, switch Activation on, set the conditions to Entire Site, and open it in Elementor. Drag in widgets or import a ready footer from the Template Library, then publish.
Yes. Elementor’s own footer builder needs Pro, but the free Master Addons Header, Footer & Comment Builder adds the same footer template feature at no cost and runs alongside free Elementor.
Open your footer template in Elementor, click the text widget that holds the copyright line, and edit it directly. Use a dynamic year tag instead of a fixed year so the date updates on its own every year.
In the footer template’s Conditions tab, add one rule: Include → Entire Site. To keep it off specific places, add an Exclude rule and choose Front Page, Singular, Archive, Search, or 404 Page.
The two most common causes are the Activation toggle left OFF when you created the template, or display conditions that are too narrow. Open Master Addons → Theme Builder → Footer, confirm Activation is ON, and set the condition to Include → Entire Site, then clear any caching plugin.
On a block theme, open Appearance → Editor → Patterns → Template Parts → Footer and edit it in the Site Editor with blocks. It works, but only on block themes and with the standard block set. If your site is built in Elementor, a Master Addons footer template keeps everything in one editor instead of splitting your footer into a separate system.
Always edit footer.php from a child theme, never the parent, so a theme update cannot overwrite your changes, and keep a backup before you touch it. It needs PHP and HTML, and a single error can take the site down, which is why most users prefer a visual footer template. With Master Addons Theme Builder you get the same control without editing any theme file.
Yes, through Full Site Editing on block themes, the Customizer, footer widget areas, or footer.php. Each is either limited to certain themes or gives you only partial control over layout and styling. A footer template in Elementor plus Master Addons gives you drag-and-drop control on any theme, which is why it is the route this guide recommends.
Editing the footer in WordPress shouldn’t mean opening template files and crossing your fingers. With the free Master Addons Theme Builder you get an actual footer builder: add a template, decide where it shows, then edit every column, link, and the copyright line in the Elementor editor you already know.
Want to build yours? Explore the Master Addons Theme Builder and look through the full set of widgets and extensions to put together a footer that fits your brand.
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