Most good themes have the ability to customize the default footer to add a shortcode such as [current_year] into their footer for dynamically adding the current year. However, if you are designing a custom footer through Elementor, instead of using the default footer in your theme, then the theme short code may not work.
Why do you want the current year? Basically it’s to give the illusion to your visitors that your site is fresh. For copyright purposes, technically the copyright is the date something is published, so for those who publish content on a regular basis, they may want a range of years to show the date first published up to and including the current year, such as 2011 – [current_year]. And in other cases a business may want the year their domain first went online.
Here are the few simple steps to use to insert current year into your Elementor custom footer:
Add a text box to the section you want your Current Year displayed.
Under Content, click on the word “Dynamic” that is just above and to the right of the Visual Editor tabs.
Click on the Current Date and Time under the Site heading .
Under Settings, select Custom for Date Format and type “Y” (without the quotes) in the Custom Format.
Under the Advanced tab, you can place the text you want before and after the year, such as “Copyright © 2011 – ” in the Before box. You can then place text in the after box, maybe your domain or business name, for example.
