Is your WordPress website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any laws, rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you are recommending or using?
Online laws, regulations, and guidelines were designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not protect someone from taking legal action against you.
Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines 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.
(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)
The new laws has consequences for several online business activities, including:
- Any form of advertising, like text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
- Retarget Marketing
- Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Blogging
- etc.
If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve digital products on their network, PayPal may suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will disapprove your web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a range of advertising and online marketing networks.
Additionally, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your website are required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of other providers whose services or products you may be offering online, and that there are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your website become fully compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. As stated above, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you offer
Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important
Consider what the implications to your business would be if any of the situations below were to happen:
- Someone has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness program.
- The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives someone allergic reactions.
- You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you’ll do with the details you’ve collected.
- Someone steals content from your website and publishes it on their site.
- There is no statement on your website or blog letting your site users know that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you could receive a sales commission if visitors buy it through your affiliate link.
- You have not spelled out the terms of your refund policies.
- Someone claims that the testimonials on your site are false and tries to sue you.
- You have not disclosed that you received a free copy in your product review.
- Your website publishes adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.
Consider also the following actual examples of costly compliance breaches:
- A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to provide a copy of the judgement to everyone he does business with for the next 20 years — including employees.
- A social networking app developer copped a whopping $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 does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
- An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken 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 exposed to litigation through non-compliance?
Regardless of whether you are a:
- CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
- Multilevel Marketer
- Affiliate Promoter
- AdSense Publisher
- Niche Publisher
- Amazon Associate
- e-Commerce Store Owner
- Publisher Of Adult Content
- Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
- Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product
It’s imperative to ensure that your website stays legally compliant.
Compliance With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.
Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need of observing the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.
You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of many companies you interact with.
Here are just some examples:
Google requires websites to display legal information if using their services. This includes using services like Google Analytics …
(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)
Generating revenue with your WordPress blogs with Google AdSense online advertising …
(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)
And even promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …
(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)
If you plan to sell digital products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you are required to add a number of legal pages before your products are approved for sale …
(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)
The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …
(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)
FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant
FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.
If you plan to do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your website is compliant with all FTC regulations and guidelines.
Many business resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …
(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)
Don’t Forget Social Media Apps
If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with information about various legal pages …
(Social networking apps also require compliance)
- 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., then you most probably are.
- If you plan to promote services or products on your site as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, 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 shut down.
- If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a litigation magnet.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)
What Legal Information Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Compliant?
If you suspect that your web site falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.
At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website will help your site keep out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and 3rd-party providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):
- About Us Page
- Contact Us
- Privacy Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance
Additionally, you may want to look into implementing any of these legal pages where applicable:
- Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides money-making advice)
- Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
- Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to downloadable videos or audio files on your site)
Types Of Disclosure Pages
It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your website. For example:
- No Material Connection – This lets users know that you will not be receiving any form of payment for writing the content.
- Affiliate Links – Disclosure that informs users that you may be compensated if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
- Sample Or review Copy – Informs your readers that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product by the author or developer.
- Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets site users be aware that you have been compensated in some form 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 Compliance Pages To Your Site
Ideally, you will consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to include them in your website.
Upload Legal Pages To Your Site
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 legals directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. using FTP) …
(Create a ‘legals’ folder in your server and upload pages via FTP)
You can then easily add a link to your 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 add these to the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your website) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from every page …
(It’s important to display links to your legal information on all of your site’s pages)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial:
Store-Bought Legal Templates
You can easily find attorney-drafted downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones shown below:
Find Legal Forms
For more details, go here:
Another option is to download a set of cut and paste legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert …
Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages
(Website Legal Pages)
Cut & Paste website legal templates were written by an attorney and 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 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
- Federal Trade Commission Compliance
- Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
- ToS & Conditions of Use.
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 web pages and publish or upload these to your server as described earlier.
More information:
Legal Page Plugins
In addition to using templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use plugins.
Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress sites you should check out:
WordPress Legal Pages Plugin
(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)
If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …
The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time.
Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages:
- Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes 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 around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
- Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
- Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any WordPress page.
- Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages 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 site.
- Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When the user agrees to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
- Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.
When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear in your dashboard menu section …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)
This lets you create, view and edit your legal pages from the admin area …
(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Area)
The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, niche websites, Amazon sites, etc …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)
Select from various pre-written legal templates …
(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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 the plugin site to learn more this great plugin:
Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs with over 20 customizable legal templates for your online business …
For more details go here:
Legal Suite Pro Plugin
(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)
This 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 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 less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.
More info:
If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire the services of a legal firm.
We want your site to be protected!
Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins as described in the section below.
(Legal Pages Generator)
Legal Pages Generator allows you to easily generate basic legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.
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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your website must comply with a whole set of regulations, some 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?
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice on this website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.
Legal Resources And References
Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to remain compliant and meet its 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
- Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB
- 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
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
Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)