When you update your website, the copyright year does not automatically change and should be manually updated to reflect the current year or the last year of significant updates. This is because the copyright date represents when the website or its content was first published and the year of the most recent updates. For example, if a website was launched in 2010 and has been updated through 2015, the copyright notice would read 2010-2015.
Updating the copyright year is important for legal reasons as well as to accurately reflect the currency of the website's content. While there is no hard and fast rule for how substantial the updates must be to warrant a change in the copyright year, it is generally advisable to update the year when significant changes have been made to the website. Additionally, if new authors have contributed to the website, it is important to update the copyright notice to reflect their involvement.
It is also worth noting that, in the United States, blog posts are automatically copyrighted the moment they are published, regardless of whether a copyright notice is present. However, including a copyright notice can help establish ownership and provide a legal record of the work. To update the copyright year, you can manually change it in the website's footer or use a dynamic solution, such as adding a code snippet to your WordPress theme's footer, that automatically updates the year.