Category: WordPress Configuration

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

As the digital realm continues growing at such a rapid pace and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website remains legal, especially if your digital presence is important in the success 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 commercial gain, then you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also known as BBB. Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The introduction of new laws has legal consequences for various online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, like Google AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enroll in many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

If your online presence 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 the importance of having a compliant website and provides inexpensive resources and solutions to help make your WordPress website compliant in minutes.

Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts 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

Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be if any of these scenarios were to take place:

• A customer suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness program.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people allergic reactions.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone steals content from your site and puts it up on their website.
• You have not divulged to your site users that you are an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing and may receive an affiliate commission if they end up buying through your link.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your refund or return policies.
• Online visitors claim the testimonials on your site are all fake and decide to sue you as a result.
• You have not disclosed that you received a free copy of the product you are reviewing.
• Your site publishes adult information and you did not take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage persons.

Consider too the documented examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information 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 users from scraping UIDs. Many internet marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach of 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 cautions or lose access entirely 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 you could easily be exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

it’s important to make sure that your online business is legally compliant.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.

You are expected to let your site visitors know that your website complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you engage with online.

Here are just some examples:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Monetizing your WordPress blog using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your services via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information-based products through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for selling digital products via ClickBank)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses 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 has happened in the past, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

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

A number of online resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to develop applications that will integrate with your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Apps that integrate with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay 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 their 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 business interests.

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

What Legal Pages Does My Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?

If your website lacks in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to consider implementing any of these compliance pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms (if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Informs your readers that you’re not being paid for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies readers that you may be compensated if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets visitors know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets users be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages To Your Site

If someone prepares and delivers the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.

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

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

You can then easily add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all of your pages …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar here:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar Navigation Menu

Use Store-Bought Templates

You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting sites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

Go here to learn more:

• FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut & paste website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• ToS & 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 WordPress page for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described earlier.

Go here to learn more:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using copy & paste templates, another option is to use plugins.

Here are some great WordPress plugins that you may be interested in checking out:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

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 …

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

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

• Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully 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 all legal pages like any page on your site.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks only when users agree to your terms.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will display inside your navigation menu …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page type dropdown menu)

Select from a number of pre-written 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

To learn more about this plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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

Learn We’ve written a detailed article about this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford legal services.

We want your site to be legally safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect 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, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to stay 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
• 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• United States Copyright Office

See 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
• Google AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
• ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
• Facebook Platform Policies

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your website.

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