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Copyright columns align by count, not by a per-column dropdown

· 3 min read
Jon-Michael Lastimosa
Jon-Michael Lastimosa
Senior Web Developer

The question: the copyright bar's alignment kept coming out wrong when cloning a source (centered in the source, left in ours). Do we give each copyright column its own alignment control, or infer the alignment from how many columns there are?

Context​

The header already has a fixed three-slot mental model: main_left, main_center, main_right. Nobody sets an "alignment" on the header — the slot is the alignment. The footer copyright bar, by contrast, is copyright_columns (count 1–3 with split widths), and each column rendered left-aligned by default. So a source whose copyright is a single centered © … line came out left-aligned, and the fix each time was to remember to nudge it — a recurring miss that read as "the algorithm doesn't know about column alignment," when really the pattern was never encoded.

The overwhelming majority of real copyright bars are one of exactly three shapes: a single centered line; a two-part "© on the left, links on the right" split; or a three-part left/center/right. That is the same left→center→right reading as the header's slots — just driven by count instead of named slots.

Options considered​

  • A per-column alignment dropdown. Maximum flexibility — every column picks its own alignment. But it adds a control to every copyright column to serve a case that is ~95% predictable from the count, and it makes the common path (a centered © line) a thing you must configure rather than a thing that just works. More UI, more to document, more to keep in sync with presets.
  • Auto-align by column count, with an override. Encode the three real shapes as the default — 1 column centered, 2 columns left|right, 3+ left|center|right — and lean on the control that already exists (each element's CSS Class field, e.g. text-start/text-center/text-end) for the rare exception. Zero new UI; the common case needs nothing.

Decision​

Auto-align by count. unysonplus_copyright_auto_align_class( $index, $count ) in footer-builder.php returns the text-align utility for a copyright column by position (''=left, text-center, text-end), and the copyright render appends it to the column wrapper. It applies to the copyright bar only — the main-footer widget columns keep their natural left alignment (widget columns don't center by count).

The escape hatch is the element's own CSS Class field: a text-* utility there sits deeper in the DOM than the column wrapper, so it wins. Want a single left copyright line (against the centered default)? Either add text-start, or — as the user pointed out — just use 2 columns with column 2 blank: column 1 is left by the same rule, no override at all.

Why​

It matches a model the product already teaches (the header's left/center/right slots), so there is one alignment concept to learn, not two. It makes the common case free and keeps the exception cheap by reusing the CSS Class field that every header/footer element already carries — the same "use the slot's own option, not a stylesheet, and don't add a control for the 5% case" principle behind the spacing utilities (mt-4, pt-9). And it removes a recurring cloning miss: a centered source copyright now reproduces with no per-site fiddling.