Category: WordPress Configuration

One of the worst situations a business owner can find themselves in is to be on the wrong side of the law.

As the internet continues to grow at such a fast pace and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s absolutely vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for commercial gain, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau)

These laws has implications for several online business activities, including:

• Any type of advertising, including pay-per-click advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a range of advertising and online marketing networks.

If your business online is not in compliance, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website or blog may be required to comply with certain legalities according to laws that govern your business, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be advertising online, and that there are solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your sites become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Does Your Site Comply With The Law?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. Do 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 in your country or region.

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users an adverse reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t defined what you plan to do with it.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website letting visitors know that you are an affiliate for the product you are marketing and could receive a sales commission if visitors purchase it via your link.
• You did not spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are all fake and try to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you were given a free copy of a product you are reviewing.
• Your site publishes adult-related information and you haven’t taken appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

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

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to give a copy of the judgement to everyone they do business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 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% were breaking 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 entirely to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies

All the leading companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

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

For example:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your WordPress blog using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your products using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell products online via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages before your products are approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for vendors selling through ClickBank)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in 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 plan to do any type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC regulations.

Many business resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See our additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you are planning to develop social networking applications for your website, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others require you to provide information about various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote services or products on your site via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

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

What Compliance Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Compliant?

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

Adding the following legal pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):

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

Additionally, you may want to consider adding any of the following pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general advice about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you are not being paid for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies site users that you will benefit financially if they buy through an affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to site users that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
• 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site

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

Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Website

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

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

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website) so that users have access to the information from every page …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your WordPress sidebar or footer here:

• Adding And Configuring Widgets On The Sidebar Navigation Area

Ready-Made Legal Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and website forms and agreements by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more information, go here:

• Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)

These legal templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with search and replace to insert your own business details, then pasted into your legal pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates 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 the pages to your web server as described previously.

Visit this website to learn more:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

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

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-driven sites that you should check out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If creating legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you loads of headaches.

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

• Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will be added to your navigation menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

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

Choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP 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

To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

total website compliance and disclaimer solution …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 – 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 the plugin on all of your websites.

Go here for more info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some type of basic legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance from a solicitor.

We want your business to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal documentation, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As stated earlier, if you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party sites that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website or blog must comply with numerous regulations, some of which you may not even 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

References And Legal Resources

Here is a useful list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet 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 – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program
• 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

Plus …

• Google Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• Google 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 add essential legal pages to your site using simple solutions.

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