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Footnotes Made Easy

Footnotes Made Easy banner
Active installs
2k+
40 ratings
4.6
Last updated
2 months ago
Version
3.2.2
Tested up to
WP 7.1.3

About this plugin

Footnotes Made Easy is a simple, but powerful, method of adding footnotes to your posts and pages.

Key features include…

  • Simple footnote insertion via double parentheses
  • Combine identical notes
  • Solution for paginated posts
  • Suppress Footnotes on specific page types
  • Option to display ‘pretty’ tooltips using jQuery
  • Lots of configuration options
  • And much, much more!

Footnotes Made Easy is a fork of WP Footnotes, a plugin by Simon Elvery which was abandoned some years ago.

Please visit the Github page for the latest code development, planned enhancements and known issues.

Getting Started

Creating a footnote is incredibly simple – you just need to include your footnote in double parentheses, such as this…

This is a sentence ((and this is your footnote)).

The footnote will then appear at the bottom of your post/page.

Important note: Make sure you include a space before your opening double parentheses or the footnote won’t work!

Options

You have a fair few options on how the identifier links, footnotes and back-links look which can be found in the WordPress admin area under ‘Settings -> Footnotes’.

Paginated Posts

Some of you seem to like the paginating post, which is kind of problematic. By default, each page of your post will have its own set of footnotes at the bottom and the numbering will start again from 1 for each page.

The only way to get around this is to know how many posts are on each page and tell Footnotes Made Easy what number you want the list to start at for each of the pages. So at some point on each page (that is, between each <!--nextpage--> tag) you need to add a tag to let the plugin know what number the footnotes on this page should start at. The tag should look like this <!--startnum=5--> where “5” is the number you want the footnotes for this page to start at.

Referencing

Sometimes it’s useful to be able to refer to a previous footnote a second (or third, or fourth…) time. To do this, you can either simply insert the exact same text as you did the first time and the identifier should simply reference the previous note. Alternatively, if you don’t want to do all that typing again, you can construct a footnote like this: ((ref:1)) and the identifier will reference the footnote with the given number.

Even though it’s a little more typing, using the exact text method is much more robust. The number referencing will not work across multiple pages in a paged post (but will work within the page). Also, if you use the number referencing system you risk them identifying the incorrect footnote if you go back and insert a new footnote and forget to change the referenced number.

Available in 8 Languages

Footnotes Made Easy is fully internationalized, and ready for translations.

Many thanks to the following translators for their contributions:

If you would like to add a translation to this plugin then please head to our Translating WordPress page

Screenshots

Analytics

Live from WordPress.org, refreshed daily. Last refresh Oct 18, 2026.

Top 5,000 on WordPress.org Plugin rankings
  • Downloads on a typical day are down 24% on the month before.
  • Passes 3 of 4 health checks below.
3/4

Health checks

What a careful site owner looks at before installing.

  • Actively maintained Last release 2 months ago
  • Tested with current WordPress Tested up to 7.1.3
  • Support questions answered 0 of 2 resolved in two months
  • Well rated 4.6 stars from 40 ratings
Active installs
2,000+ WordPress.org rounds this down
This week
139 downloads −12% vs the week before
Last 30 days
656 downloads −24% on a typical day
All time
65k downloads On WordPress.org since 2017
Downloads per week Every update counts as a download on WordPress.org, so release weeks spike.
Latest week
139
Typical week
130
Peak
1,980 Week of Nov 2, 2025
View as table
WeekDownloads
Week of Oct 11139
Week of Oct 4157
Week of Sep 27150
Week of Sep 20157
Week of Sep 13179
Week of Sep 6171
Week of Aug 30226
Week of Aug 23304
Week of Aug 16453
Week of Aug 91,621
Week of Aug 2147
Week of Jul 26168
Week of Jul 19204
Week of Jul 12196
Week of Jul 5315
Week of Jun 28295
Week of Jun 211,554
Week of Jun 14498
Week of Jun 71,349
Week of May 3180
Week of May 2478
Week of May 1764
Week of May 1075
Week of May 3114
Week of Apr 2670
Week of Apr 1976
Week of Apr 1276
Week of Apr 571
Week of Mar 2982
Week of Mar 2276
Week of Mar 1589
Week of Mar 8121
Week of Mar 174
Week of Feb 2282
Week of Feb 1563
Week of Feb 879
Week of Feb 197
Week of Jan 2584
Week of Jan 1893
Week of Jan 1188
Week of Jan 481
Week of Dec 28, 202575
Week of Dec 21, 202587
Week of Dec 14, 2025139
Week of Dec 7, 2025257
Week of Nov 30, 20251,219
Week of Nov 23, 2025619
Week of Nov 16, 2025219
Week of Nov 9, 20251,216
Week of Nov 2, 20251,980
Week of Oct 26, 202575
Week of Oct 19, 202595
Where it stands Rank among the plugins WPFolks tracks every day.

One of the 5,000 most popular plugins on WordPress.org. Positions show here once it reaches the top half of a ranking.

Active installs over time Recorded by WPFolks every day since Oct 14, 2026.

Gathering install data

WordPress.org only publishes today's install count, so WPFolks records it every day. The chart appears here once there is enough history to draw.

Reviews

4.6 40 ratings on WordPress.org
  • 5 35
  • 4 1
  • 3 0
  • 2 1
  • 1 3

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