Category: Management Plugins

Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose services or products you endorse or use?

Internet laws were designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t excuse someone from taking legal action against you.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the (US based) 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.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws affect various online business activities, including:

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

If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into a range of advertising or online merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your site may be subject to certain legal requirements, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be advertising online, and that there are solutions for WordPress that can help your websites become more compliant, such as the tools that we list further below.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws governing online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you endorse on your website

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider for one minute what would happen to your business if any of the following were to take place:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
• You’ve informed your subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly informed them what you plan to do with the details you have collected.
• Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog telling visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending that you may receive financial benefits if they buy using your affiliate link.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms of your return policies.
• Someone claims that your testimonials are fake and tries to sue you as a result.
• You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy in your product review.
• Your site publishes adult information and you have not taken appropriate measures to keep underaged 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 personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give a copy of the judgement to everyone he does 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 children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation 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 notices or lose access to the Google program with the violation, 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 non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

You need to make sure that your digital presence has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to your site users.

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

Compliance with 3rd-party companies terms and policies is important.

You are expected to let your site users know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of most companies you engage with online.

For example:

Google requires your site to display legal information if using their services. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your online properties with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

Or promoting your products via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell products online with places like 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 selling via their networks …

(Policy requirements for selling digital products via ClickBank)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners 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 does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

Various business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

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

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to create social networking applications that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then 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 generating revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or use 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
• If you’ve been wondering if “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 third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

What Legal Pages Should I Add To My Site To Be Legally Compliant?

If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following legal pages to your website should help you keep out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into including any of these pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides money-making advice)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Informs users that you’re not being paid for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets site users know that you may be compensated if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Review/Sample Copy – Explains to site users that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs users that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your Site

Ideally, you will consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Website

If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), 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 HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your site) to ensure that users have access to the information from all pages …

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

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar and footer, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

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

Legal Templates

You can find attorney-prepared downloadable website forms and agreements just by searching online, or by visiting websites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-prepared legal forms)

Visit this website to learn more:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

Another option is to purchase a package of legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page for each legal form you want added 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 previously described.

More information:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using templates, you can keep things very simple using plugins.

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

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your website much easier and save you a great deal of time.

Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin:

• Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of 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 – Includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will 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 any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear in your main dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review websites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)

Select from several pre-configured legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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 for more information about this handy plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that contains over twenty customizable legal page templates for your site …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

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 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute 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 or flip).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your site to be legally protected!

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 legal forms, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate basic legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your website must comply with a number of laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even 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 do not provide legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your specific business.

Additional Resources

Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Better Business Bureau Website
• 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
• US Copyright Office

See Also …

• Google 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 legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog using inexpensive resources and solutions.

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