Category: WordPress Configuration

One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.

Online laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws has ramifications for several online business categories, including:

• Any type of advertising, e.g. PPC advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

Additionally, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your site are subject to legal requirements, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering online, and that there are solutions that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever you do business.

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider for one moment what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives people an adverse reaction.
• You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website making your site users aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing and will receive a commission if visitors decide to buy through your affiliate link.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your refund policies.
• Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are all fake and try to sue you.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site publishes adult information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider too these real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $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, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 to the Google program whose policies they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk becoming a target of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords User
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

It’s imperative to make sure that your website or blog stays fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Big companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you interact 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)

Generating revenue online with your sites using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense display advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell digital products through companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will be required to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website complies with all FTC guidelines.

Various online business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to some of these at the end of this article …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about various legal pages …

(Social networking apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or using Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

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

Essential Legal Pages To Include In Your Website

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

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

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider including any of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general content about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding correct web content disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets readers know that you will not receive any kind of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies your visitors that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to users that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to users that you were 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 website publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site

Ideally, you will consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Pages Manually To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend creating a legal directory on your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your web server and upload pages using FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or the footer section of your website or blog) so that users have access to legal information from all your pages …

(Display links to your legal information on all of your website’s pages)

If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress, see this tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Website

Ready-Made Legal Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted forms and agreements just by searching online, or going to sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms)

For more details, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to download a set of cut & paste legal templates drafted by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates)

These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.

The legal forms included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Forms include:

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

You can either create a new page 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 the pages to your web server as described earlier.

More info:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

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

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users that you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages Plugin)

If the idea of manually setting up legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you many headaches.

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks when users agree to your terms.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your main dashboard area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Type of Site drop down menu)

Choose from various pre-configured legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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

For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, visit this website:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …

Learn We have written a detailed review of this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 of Use
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress – 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 site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

Visit this site to learn more:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring legal experts to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your website to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any kind of business online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your internet presence must comply with various laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not be aware of.

Non-compliance 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice in this article. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.

Additional Information

Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Better Business Bureau
• Dot Com Disclosures: Information About Online Advertising
• Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act
• CAN-SPAM Act Guide
• Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule
• FTC Regulatory Review Web Page
• FTC Rules and Guides Currently Under Review
• The Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force – Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework
• FTC Staff Report: Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
• FTC Final Guides Governing Endorsements and Testimonials
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

In Addition …

• Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• AdSense Help – Required Content
• Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
• Google AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
• ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
• Facebook Platform Policies

We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and inexpensive solutions.

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