How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has implications for several business categories, including:

Any kind of advertising, including contextual advertising
Retarget Marketing
Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
Affiliate Marketing
Product Creators
Blogging
etc.

If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a range of advertising or online merchant networks.

Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

In this article, we look at the importance of having a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

Is Your Site Legally Compliant?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations in your country or region.

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Consider what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

A person suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone who purchases from your link an allergic reaction.
You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you will do with their details.
Someone copies your content and publishes it on their own site.
There is no statement on your website or blog letting visitors know that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and could derive financial benefits if they purchase it.
You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and try to sue you because of it.
You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
Your site contains adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider also the actual case studies of costly compliance breaches described:

A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card info to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of at least 3 of Google’s policies. Although the website owners could technically be sued by Google, more than likely what could happen, is that they would be issued notices or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk being a target of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
Multilevel Marketer
Affiliate Marketer
AdSense Publisher
Niche Publisher
Amazon Affiliate
e-Commerce Store Owner
Publisher Of Adult Content
Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

it’s important to ensure that your website or blog has the right legal pages and clearly accessible to your site users.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Complying with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are required to let your site users know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you do business with online.

For example:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using many of their services. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your websites with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products through companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages before your products are approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policies on your site, especially if you plan to sell products with the aid of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your website complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

A number of resources online provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to develop apps for your site users, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others will require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
If you are considering promoting services or products on your site via affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

What Compliance Pages Should I Add To My Website To Be Compliant?

If your website falls short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your website keep out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and external service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues):

About Us Page
Contact Page
Privacy Statement
Terms And Conditions
Disclaimers
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

As well as the above pages, you may want to look into implementing one or more of these legal pages:

Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
Anti-Spam Policy
Earnings Disclaimer
External Links Policy
Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general information about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of web content disclosure is important. For example:

No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive any type of payment for writing the post.
Affiliate Links – Informs site users that you will receive compensation if they buy through your affiliate link.
Review Or Sample Copy – Discloses to visitors that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
Sponsored Post – Discloses to readers that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
Third Party Advertising – Lets users know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. using FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

You can then easily add a link to your legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors can access the information from all of your pages …

(It’s important to display links to your legal information to visitors on all of your website’s pages)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer in WordPress using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

Using Widgets

Ready-Made Legal Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-prepared website forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to download a set of cut & paste legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with simple search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal web pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates include:

Anti-Spam Policy
Copyright Notice
Disclaimer
DMCA Compliance
FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page on your website for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload these to your web server as previously described.

To learn more, visit this website:

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some great legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually setting up legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WP Legal Pages instead …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your WordPress site a lot easier and save you time.

Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages are:

Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any WP page.
Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any page on your site.
Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when users agree to your legal terms.
New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will be added to your WordPress dashboard menu …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …

(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Create different legal pages)

You can also select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Templates)

Legal page templates include:

Terms of Use (Users are forced to agree to Terms and Conditions before using site)
Linking Policy
External Links Policy
Terms and Conditions
Refund Policy
Affiliate Disclosure
Privacy Policy
Affiliate Agreement
Facebook Privacy Policy
Earnings Disclaimer
Antispam Policy
DoubleClick DART Cookies Policy
Disclaimer Template
FTC Disclosure Statement Template
Medical Disclaimer Template
Testimonials Disclosure – As per FTC guidelines
Amazon Affiliate Disclosure Template
DMCA Policy Template
California Privacy Rights Policy Template
Digital Goods Refund Policy Template
COPPA – Children’s Online Privacy Policy Template
Blog Comments Policy Template
Newsletter Subscription Policy and Disclaimer Template
FTC Disclaimer Widget

Visit the plugin website for more details about using this useful plugin:

WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

total website compliance & disclaimer solution …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

This plugin lets you easily install professionally-written legal pages such as:

Anti-Spam Policy
Copyright Notice
DMCA Compliance
FTC Compliance
Privacy Policy
Social Media Disclosure
Medical Disclaimer
Terms And Conditions
Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – Professionally-written legal forms)

Additionally:

Drag & Drop FTC Disclaimer Widget: Add an FTC Disclaimer to any WordPress sidebar or widget area.
Customizable EU Cookie Compliance Bar: Display an EU cookie compliance bar if you are getting traffic from the EU and your sites use cookies.

With just one-click you can install almost all of the legal pages your site needs and these professionally written legal pages can be created in your theme and/or as a standalone page outside of your theme.

The plugin developers have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress powered site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

More information:

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing some form of basic legal protection on your site until you can afford professional legal services.

We want your site to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider using one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal templates, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

***

As stated earlier, if you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is compliant with all legal requirements and the terms of service and guidelines required by third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or sell online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole range of regulations, many of which you may not be aware of.

Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Legal Resources & References

Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.