Comments on: Automate your website copyright date

By: Ian Devlin

Ian Devlin — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 08:37:45 +0000

It is indeed Joe, but since so many sites like to display it and keep it up to date, then this helps to do so.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:36:32 +0000

Why not just omit the date – all work is automatically your copyright isn’t it, whether you say so or not?

David – surely the date that’s on the page is so easily faked that it doesn’t actually offer any protection?

By: Ian Devlin

Ian Devlin — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:23:18 +0000

Hi David, very true, but then you could easily add in the date you wrote it. For example in PHP:

2009 -

That way it would read: 2009 – 2011

By: David Carlisle

David Carlisle — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:35:38 +0000

Realise this comment is a bit late but…

The main point of the copyright date is to assert priority, if someone posts identical material you want to be able to assert that you posted the material with an earlier date copyrighted 1998 (or whenever). If you code the date as above you get no protection at all as it shows the date the reader looks at the page, not the date that the page was written.

By: Copyright Year On Websites | AllGraphicsOnline.com

[...] website copyright date iandevlin.com [...]

By: ian

ian — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:32:41 +0000

Yeah I’ve noticed that too in general with PHP5, anytime you use any date functions, it throws that in your face.

Thanks for pointing it out though.

By: Nicolas Gallagher

Nicolas Gallagher — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:09:48 +0000

I ran into this problem using the PHP option with strict error reporting: http://www.webmasterworld.com/php/3016276.htm (I’m using 5.2.6)

By: ian

ian — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 10:54:44 +0000

Thanks Mark, the last = was actually supposed to be a %, but I mistyped. Corrected now.

It’s been wrong for a year, not good!

Thanks for the Ruby code, it’s been added.

By: Mark Embling

Mark Embling — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 10:28:24 +0000

The .NET ones should only have the = at the start, and in the case of the C# one, no semicolon. Also, since it would always call ToString for you, you don’t actually need to include it. This would be more than fine:

Also, the Ruby variant (assuming you’re using ERB) would be: < %= Time.now.year %>

I can’t help but agree with you about this. I have used this trick on my own sites for some time, I don’t know why so many still do not. Nice to see a post about it to help others out who may not have considered it

By: ian

ian — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:00:59 +0000

Doh, thanks. Fixed!