Category: WordPress Plugins

One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.

As the digital way of life continues growing at such a rapid pace and the rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to try and stay on top of what’s going on and ensure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having a digital presence is an essential factor in your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, 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 (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

The new laws has legal consequences for several business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, like contextual ads
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your website does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of advertising or online merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your website(s) may be required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be offering online, and that there are plugins for WordPress users that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the tools that we list further below.

Is Your Website Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. Do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all laws wherever your business is located.

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

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

• Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you’ll do with their details.
• Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you’re an affiliate for the product you are recommending that you will earn a sales commission if visitors decide to purchase using your affiliate link.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are misleading and tries to sue you as a result.
• You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy of a product you are reviewing.
• Your website contains adult-related information and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider too these actual examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to issue 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 details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping 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 independently-conducted 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 breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation 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 with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

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

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdWords User
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

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

Complying With Third-Party Companies

Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with online.

For example:

Google requires you to display certain information when using their services and product features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your websites with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your products or services through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell digital products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling via ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business 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 often results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your website complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

Many sites provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(You must 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 for your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others will require you to provide information about various legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether or not you may be 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 via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay advertising, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, 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 and policies)

Common Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your web site lacks in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will keep you out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

In addition to the above, you may want to consider implementing any of the following pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general health or medical information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you provide users with access to media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right disclosure information to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs visitors that you’re not receiving any type of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Informs users that you will benefit financially if they purchase through an affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets users know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets your readers be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to satisfy the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages Content To Your Website

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

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

We recommend creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

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

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

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

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar

Using Store-Bought Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)

Go here for more information:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a simple quick search and replace to insert your own details, then pasted into your 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
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

You can either create a new page for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your server as previously described.

More info:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use plugins.

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

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

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

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

• Built-in Legal Templates – 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 basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like every other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to any of your 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 every other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed 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 item is added to your main dashboard menu …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)

Choose from various pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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

Visit this website to learn more about using this great plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

complete website compliance and disclaimer solution …

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

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

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

We want your website to be legally safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documents, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

***

As stated earlier, if you do business online, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of third-party sites that you may be promoting or selling online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.

Legal Information

Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

See Also …

• 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
• 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 provided above to quickly and easily add legal pages to your site using inexpensive methods, resources and WordPress plugins.

***