Originally Posted by GrouchyAdmin

The easiest way to do so to keep people from actively seeking to remove it, but would probably not get any 'bored surfer' traffic' would be to just <span style='display:none'>...</span> - however, you then don't get that surfer traffic.

I suppose you could do something bizarre like making a very simple wp plugin trivially hide the links/text within a base64 string, which outputs the full footer with the html/div/etc closure, and if they remove that, it breaks the HTML. That'd stop quite a few of them, with the objective of if they want to remove it, it'll be wrong, so they use a different theme.



Encoding a theme? Requiring that this be installed as well? I dunno. People will probably be a bit wary of any 'encoded' support tools for WP.

Regarding non-hardcore, I also can't say.. that's really up to you and what you want to allow for your specific themes/sponsorship.

Just a couple of ideas off the top of my head.