My inner self cries when I see:

Copyright © 2002-2013

Never hard code! NEVER!

@norman70688 Copyright's always applicable

We should just be writing - © Always.

Why, this makes clear from when to when a project was being actively developed and maintained.

As for my website, I do hardcode the date - in the footer template. Once per year, I have to change the year, re-compile and upload. Not that hard, and no server load at runtime.

@Fast-Nop

For 1 website?

@Linux yep. Of course, if you are using a CMS anyway and do 80 requests and 200 database queries for each page, then one more to insert the current year won't matter.

@Fast-Nop

I mean, most webdevelopers have alot more sites ;)

@Linux then again, most web devs aren't into performance optimised websites so that one tiny runtime slowdown more won't matter.

My inner self tells:

A vulnerable application ahead

@Fast-Nop Most web devs have so many more tasks for their multitude of sites that it’s just a pain in the ass to update.

@Fast-Nop

No, that's not it.

You can't speak for all webdevs when you only manage one or two websites.

Aswell as I can't speak how to take care of banana trees when I've only grown tomatoes.

ffs, automate what you can

My favorite ones are (had coded):

Presently ©️ Copyright

And the one I use the most is

Copyright 2007 - Present.

@Linux that's exactly that. The vast majority of real world websites are far away from any performance optimisation. Just check out stuff with gtmetrix.com and see.

Even devrant.com, which is already above average, doesn't earn more than a C, and that's not because of complicated things, but just some sloppiness.

@Fast-Nop Why on earth would you want to do that? You could even just document.write the actual year on the client side.

@CodeMasterAlex because static things have zero runtime cost, and that's what I'm aiming for if possible. Changing the year in the footer template once per year, re-compile and upload isn't a burden for me.

It would be if I had a lot of websites to maintain that way - in which case I would of course automate these steps completely.

Performance is not a good reason, it takes almost no time to print a year. If you want a fast website, look at compression, caching, use optimised images (webp?), HTTP/2 and split your css/js, etc...

Maintaining that shitty copyright line is a pain in the ass when you do lots of websites. It is useless anyway, copyright is foreseen by the law, you don’t gain anything by adding that line.

a cronjob that changes the copyright date in your footer.html once a year

@Kage

assuming that you use the same server

const endYear = document.getElementById("endYear");
endYear.innerText = (new Date()).getFullYear();

Webdev here: copyrights are extremely useful to see when something was actively developed. I use a small CI pipeline to update the year if a commit comes in at CURRENT_YEAR. Just updating something automatically without contributing can be dangerous and cost me a lot of nerves when using some deprecated open source projects etc.