I'd like to add the followings into footer region / block in drupal 7.
The footer will look like this Copyright 2012 | link to privacy
What is the best way to do this?
Thanks
Go to Administer > Structure > Blocks and create a new block. You can enter title as "" to prevent title from printing. Enter you content, and choose an appropriate input format (full HTML, etc). Save it. Then, move the block to appropriate region. Most themes have a footer area that you drag and drop the block's handler to (not to the exact region. There is a drop zone middle of the page).
You can also add this text page.tpl.php file in your theme's folder.
You can embed links either using raw HTML or using PHP (which reflects correct URLs with path auto always). If you don't want to embed php in a block, which requires you to enable PHP Filter module (from core), put this in page.tpl.php.
<div id="footer-text">
<?php print l(t('Privacy policy'), 'node/5'); ?> | <?php print t('Copyright @year', array('@year' => date("Y"))); ?>
</div>
This should print the Privacy text linked to node/5 considering alias, and Copyright [year] with both labels translatable.
If you do not feel like writing PHP, then you may consider creating a menu. You can create a placeholder menu item for the static text using the module http://drupal.org/project/special_menu_items. The menu will become available as a block which you can add to your footer region.