GotAloha

Are you using a free template? There seems to be a lot of theme developers that add this sort of code to their themes in a weak effort to trick you and the search engines.

Decrypting the code you posted just shows more encrypted code that points to a javascript file located on that megajerkinfo.com site.

It should be safe to remove that code without effecting your template.

If removing it does break your theme, you’ll have to look for missing closing HTML and PHP tags in your footer.php file.

Hope that helps!

A lot of free theme developers try to force those who use their themes to display a link back to their web site in exchange for providing a free template.

The odd looking code that you posted above is base64 encrypted code that when decrypted simply renders the usual footer HTML tags.

Here’s what it decrypts into…

?>
	<div id="footer">
		<p>Copyright <?php bloginfo('name'); ?> . <?php if(is_home()) : ?><a href="https://1acnemedication.com/" title="Acne treatment ">Acne treatment </a><?php endif; ?></p>

	</div>

</div>
</div>
	<?php wp_footer(); ?>
</body>
</html>
 <?

If you remove the encrypted code, be sure that you close your HTML tags properly, since the theme’s author hid those tags within the encrypted text. Take note that there is also an opening PHP tag as well.

Hope that helps!