I was having a discussion today about the format of copyright notices and one thing sprung to mind, the need to keep them up to date.

Say for example you have the following copyright notice “Copyright 2002 – 2007 Thinksynergy Design”. As soon as it gets to 2008 that notice is out of date.

Who cares, I hear you ask?!

Yes, it is fine if you maintain just the one site, but if you have a lot of sites it is one more task for you to manage when entering the new year.

A better option (providing you use PHP) is the following script:

//the year today
$thisyear = date('Y');
//
//the year your copyright was established
$established = "2002";
//
//name of copyright owner
$copyright_owner = "Blair Millen";
//
//display correct copyright notice
if($thisyear==$established) $copyright = "© $copyright_owner $established";
else $copyright = "© $copyright_owner $established–$thisyear";


This script takes care of it all for you, and even correctly formats the notice taking into account the first year (this not having 2002 – 2002). It’s a great script, for which thanks go to Blair Millen (click for his original article)