Category: WordPress Configuration

Is your WordPress site compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you do business with?

As the internet continues to grow at such a rapid pace and rules keep changing, it’s absolutely essential that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your online presence plays an important part in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau (BBB). 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 Website)

These laws affect several online business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, including Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising or online marketing networks.

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

In this guide, we discuss the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and cost-effective solutions.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice in this article. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing business online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you endorse on your website or blog

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

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

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement letting subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you’ll do with their personal details.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website making visitors aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you are recommending and will derive a commission if they buy products using your affiliate link.
• You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund or return policies.
• Online visitors claim that your testimonials are fake and try to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website includes adult-related information and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider too the real case studies of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’re now required to provide everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting 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% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, 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 non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

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

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

Let’s take a look at some examples:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue with your blog with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

And even promoting your business via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products through companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their networks …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and statements on your website, especially if you plan to sell or promote products and services using testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.

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

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

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you plan to develop social networking applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with access to your legal pages …

(Social networking 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 sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything on your site via affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages 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 need to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

What Compliance Information Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Legally Compliant?

If your web site falls short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site should help keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider including one or more of these compliance pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides content about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Informs users that you will not receive any form of payment for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your readers know that you may be compensated if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets visitors be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Lets readers be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you should have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been completed, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Uploading Legal Pages Manually

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

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

(Create a ‘legals’ folder on 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 …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from all of your pages …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar using widgets here:

• Adding And Configuring Widgets On The WordPress Sidebar Navigation Menu

Using Ready-Made Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more details, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can download a package of website legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal pages 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 web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & 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 pages and publish or upload these to your server as described previously.

To learn more, visit this site:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using legal templates, you can simplify things using a plugin.

Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress-powered websites worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If the idea of creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

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

Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages:

• Built-in Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your terms.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal pages)

Select from a number of pre-configured legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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

Go here to learn more this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …

For an in-depth review of this plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

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 – 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

Go here for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.

We want your website to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal content, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your site complies with government regulations and the terms of service and guidelines required by third-party sites that you may be promoting or endorsing online. If your website doesn’t comply 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 provide no legal advice on this website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Additional Legal Information

Here is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission 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

Also …

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

We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site using simple solutions.

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