Perennial – Auto-Updating Copyright Year Block

From your dashboard

1. 01Go to Plugins , then the screen for adding one — Add Plugins .
2. 02Search for Perennial .
3. 03Click Install Now , then Activate .

From a downloaded .zip

1. 04Go to Plugins and open the Add Plugins screen.
2. 05Click Upload Plugin at the top, choose the .zip file, and click Install Now .
3. 06Click Activate Plugin .

By FTP

1. 07Unzip the file and upload the ghostlabs-dynamic-copyright-notice folder to /wp-content/plugins/ .
2. 08Activate the plugin from the Plugins screen.

Then add the notice

In any post, page, or template, add the Perennial: Copyright Notice block.

On a block theme, add it once to your footer template part in Appearance → Editor and every page that uses that footer carries it. On a classic theme there is no footer template part to add it to, so place the block wherever you want the notice.

There is no settings screen. Everything the block does is in its own settings and styles in the editor sidebar.

Do I have to do anything on January 1?

No. The year is worked out each time the page is served.

I use a caching plugin. Will the year still update?

The notice itself is always right — it is worked out when the page is served. What can go stale is a cached copy of the finished page: one cached on 31 December keeps serving last year’s notice until that cache is cleared.

So the plugin clears it, on four caching plugins by name. The first request of the new year that WordPress actually builds notices the year has changed and clears the cache. There is no scheduled task and nothing to configure — a cached page is served without WordPress ever loading this plugin, so the only thing that can trigger the check is the next request that is not served from cache: an admin opening the dashboard, a logged-in reader, a crawler, or any page the cache is not already holding.

Cleared for you: WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache and LiteSpeed Cache — those four, and no others. Each is asked for a full flush, so on W3 Total Cache and LiteSpeed that clears their object caches too; once a year, deliberately. Each one ties this plugin to somebody else’s code, so the list stays deliberately short; the hook in the next question is what scales.

Any other cache: if it expires at least once a year, it corrects itself the next time it expires — which with a twelve-month lifetime can be most of a year. With very long or indefinite lifetimes, clear your page cache once after New Year, or set your caching plugin to purge on a schedule.

Can I clear my own cache when the year rolls over?

Yes — two hooks, both reached on that same first request of the new year. Neither fires on a brand-new install, which has no previous year on record to compare against.

The ghostlabs_perennial_year_rolled_over action is passed the new year and the year before it. It fires whether or not this plugin clears anything, so it is the place to purge a cache, CDN or host layer this plugin does not know about.

add_action( 'ghostlabs_perennial_year_rolled_over', function ( $current, $stored ) { // Clear your own cache here. }, 10, 2 );

The ghostlabs_perennial_purge_on_rollover filter defaults to true . Return false and the plugin clears nothing itself. The action above still fires, so you can decline the built-in purge and still handle it your own way.

Which year does it use if my visitors are in other countries?

Your site’s, as set in Settings → General → Timezone . Working it out in the visitor’s browser instead would mean someone in Auckland and someone in Los Angeles could see different years for a few hours around New Year.

What if I leave the name blank?

The notice uses your site title, and keeps using it — so if you rename the site later, every notice updates. Type a name only if you want it to differ from the site title.

Can I make the year a different color or size from the rest of the line?

Yes. Select the block, open the Styles tab, and use Year typography and Year color . These affect only the year and the © symbol. The rest of the notice uses the block’s normal color and typography controls.

The year’s font size is offered in rem , em , ch and % rather than pixels, so it scales with your theme and with a reader’s text-size settings. The block’s own font size control offers whatever units your theme does.