Category: WordPress Configuration

As a website owner, the last thing you want to do is to find out that you have broken any laws, rules or regulations.

As digital business continues to grow at such a rapid pace and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your online presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau)

The new laws has legal implications for several business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, like inline advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend web applications, and you will not be accepted into various advertising and online merchant networks.

If your online business is not in compliance, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

This article explains why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website using simple methods, resources and WordPress plugins.

Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be if these situations were to take place:

• A person suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness program.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate gives people skin rashes.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you plan to do with the details you have collected.
• Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your site informing your site users that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and will derive a commission if they purchase it.
• You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund and return policies.
• Someone claims that your testimonials are misleading and decides to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
• Your site publishes adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider too the following documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• 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 a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• 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 details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 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% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached at least three 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 being a target of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

You need to ensure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With Third-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

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

You must let your visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will do business with online.

For example:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using their products. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue online with your WordPress site with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your services using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information products via places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add legal pages to your website before your products are approved for selling via their networks …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling through ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to use product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website 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 business are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your website is compliant with FTC regulations.

You can find many resources online that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See our additional references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you plan to create apps for your website users, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about various legal pages …

(Apps that integrate with social networks also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

What Legal Pages Should You Add To Your Website To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?

If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues):

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

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

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general health or medical advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Informs visitors that you are not being paid for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies readers that you will benefit financially if they purchase through an affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets your visitors be aware that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to your readers that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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 should have your lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Site

If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your 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 …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors can access the information from every web page …

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

If you need help adding links to pages on your WP sidebar or footer, see this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add Widgets To Your WordPress Sidebar Section

Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more details, visit this website:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut and paste legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects Federal Trade Commission regulations that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

You can either create a new page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described earlier.

More information:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use a plugin.

Here are some great plugins for WordPress-driven websites you may be interested in using:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

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

WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you loads of headaches.

Some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of 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 clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your pages and the information will 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 every other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your legal terms.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear in your navigation menu …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings Area)

You have the option of easily creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page type menu)

You can also select from various pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Built-In 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 to learn more this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 Service
• 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 powered site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of legal experts to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your website to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal documentation, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

***

As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the terms of service and guidelines required by 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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 do not offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to stay 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
• Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – 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

And …

• 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 why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

***