Just installed 3.4.4 and I see we now have a link back to the forums in the footer, I would like to remove it as it is not pertinent to the site.

It looks to be in the DB as a line of code, I have seen this before with lesser WP themes and was warned that Themes using this sort of code are quite often malicious and should not be trusted, is this a correct assumption?
Looks like I will be deleting the theme pretty quickly.

There are directions for removing the footer links in the gold forum (you will need to donate $20 to get access) the theme is the third most downloaded theme from the wordpress site because of it's flexability. But if you feel you should get rid of it, why did you post?

I edited my post to include

It looks to be in the DB as a line of code, I have seen this before with lesser WP themes and was warned that Themes using this sort of code are quite often malicious and should not be trusted, is this a correct assumption?
Looks like I will be deleting the theme pretty quickly.

I use the theme on 3 other sites and do not like the idea of having malicious code anywhere in a theme.

The footer link is not the least bit malicious -- it is very common to put a backlink into a FREELY distributed product, and most users of open source applications understand that the link should be left in as a courtesy to the developer whose hard work has provided them with an excellent tool.

I have no doubt that once you have spent a little time exploring the other free themes available for WordPress that you will quickly realize what an incredibly robust product Atahualpa is by comparison - as far as I have found it does not have an equal in the free theme world for the level of customization and control it gives you.

An unobtrusive backlink is a small price to pay. Or you can make a token donation to the developer and receive the detailed instructions for removing the link from all of your Atahualpa installations.

Update: After posting I had a look at your history on the forum and see that you have been posting for 6-8 months (so I assume you have been using Atahualpa for an equal amount of time). The courtesy footer links have been a part of Atahualpa since at least January (which was when I started using it) and you made a post in March http://forum.bytesforall.com/showthread.php?t=700 politely inquiring as to how to remove it -- so I guess it just seems odd that all of a sudden you are bothered and distrustful of an innocent and well-earned footer backlink!

The way the footer code is inserted has been changed in the most recent version, it is no longer just a link but code in the database, I think this is it.

U!bPVnT3FBGxmmRh1iawpxEqo3vFYd7fFknq7xrhuAuykGXyId Tng*!MO*J)wj)DB#E!

where in teh database do you see that code? To my knowledge, there is nothing encrypted by Atahualpa and put in the database.

That's not to say that if you use something like a flash slideshow and have the code added in one of the Atahualpa options, thatt you woudn't see something like this, but then it would be YOU putting it in.

wp_options

Option id = 60, Option name = secret, Option value = U!bPVnT3FBGxmmRh1iawpxEqo3vFYd7fFknq7xrhuAuykGXyId Tng*!MO*J)wj)DB#E!

All of the Atahualpa option names start with 'bfa_ata'.

If you did a quick google search on 'wordpress wp_option secret' you would discover that this is the 'secret' key that you defined in your wp-config.php (see http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php)

this is a normal expected value stored in the database by WordPress.

Thanks, it was the result of searching the DB for anything linked to bytesforall.

if you search the forums with the word 'export' you find a TIP for moving the Atahualpa options. In it you will find an SQL select for getting all the Atahualpa options'

Oh Yeah, in regard to your original question, there are directions for removing the link back in the GOLD forum - you need to have donated at least $20 to have access to that area of the forums.