Category: WordPress Plugins

One of the worst situations a business owner can find themselves in is to break the law.

As the cybersphere continues growing at such a rapid pace and rules constantly change, it’s vital to try and stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if having a digital presence is an important part of your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure 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 for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has ramifications for several online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, like contextual advertising
• 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 of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a number of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

In this article, we discuss why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider for one moment what could happen to your business if the following incidents were to happen:

• A person has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
• You haven’t informed your site visitors that you are promoting a product as an affiliate that you could get paid an affiliate commission if they decide to buy via your link.
• You have not spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are all fake and tries to sue you.
• You did not disclose that you were given a free copy in a product review.
• Your site includes adult information and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider also these real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to issue 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 details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers took a risk 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two 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 cautions 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 becoming a target of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website is legally compliant.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies

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

You must let your visitors know that your website complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you do business with online.

For example:

Google requires you to display certain information if using their products. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your site using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

Or promoting your services through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell digital products using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add certain legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for selling via their marketplace …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners 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 chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC regulations and guidelines.

There are many online resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to develop apps that integrate with your website, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with their 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, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

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

Essential Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Website

If your website or blog is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should keep you out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to consider implementing one or more of the following pages:

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

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of disclosure is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets your visitors be aware that you will not receive for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to your visitors that you will receive compensation if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Informs your visitors that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re writing about by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs site users that you were compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs visitors 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.

How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

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

Uploading Legal Pages To Your Website

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

We recommend adding a legals folder to your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory using FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

You can then add links to your 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 clearly accessible to your visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your site) to ensure that users have access to the information from all of your pages …

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

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

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Blog

Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)

More information:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut and paste website legal templates written by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

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

Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your legal pages.

The legal forms 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 (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission guidelines that came into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page on your website for every legal form you want to add 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 previously described.

For more details, go here:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

In addition to using copy & paste templates, you can keep things really simple by using WordPress plugins.

Here are some WordPress plugins you may be interested in using:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …

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

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages:

• 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 legal pages you will need 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, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other WP page.
• Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• 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. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page type menu)

Choose from various built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages – 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:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable legal page templates for your online business …

For more details go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – 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 And Conditions
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro 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 site. You can have legal pages 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.

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

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

We want your site to be safe!

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

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you do business online, you need to ensure that your site complies with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may decide to promote or sell online. Your internet presence must comply with numerous regulations, many of which you may not 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Additional Information

Below is a useful list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to comply and meet its legal obligations:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• BBB – 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

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

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