Tag: Legal Pages

Is your WordPress site legal? Do you know if your site is breaking any rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are using or endorsing?

Online laws and regulations were designed to protect consumers and apply to any person 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 won’t excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines 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 – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The introduction of these laws has legal consequences for several business categories, including:

• Any kind of advertising, e.g. pay-per-click advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote various advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your site are required to comply with legal requirements, the importance of complying with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be offering online, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress that can help your websites become compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Does Your Website Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider for a moment what would happen to your business if the scenarios below were to take place:

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you’ll do with the details you’ve collected.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog telling your site users that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and could earn an affiliate commission if they buy using your affiliate link.
• You haven’t spelled out the conditions of your refund or return policies.
• A visitor claims that your testimonials are fake and tries to sue you.
• You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy in your product review.
• Your site contains adult information and you have not taken sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider now the following actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up their personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily become exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

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

Compliance With Third-Party Companies

Big companies and government regulatory agencies emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

You must let your site users know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will interact with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires your site to display certain information when using many of their products. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your blog using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information products using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling products through ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and disclosures to visitors, especially when using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies for breaches of regulation 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 chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your website is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.

There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with 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)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to create apps that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about various 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 companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generating revenue online 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 are required to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve ever wondered if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

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

Basic Legal Pages To Add To Your Site

If your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, then this section will help you.

Adding the following compliance pages to your website should help your website stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and 3rd-party providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):

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

In addition to the pages above, you may want to consider implementing one or more of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides content about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add correct disclosures to your site. For example:

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

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site

Ideally, you will consult your lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually To Your Website

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 legal folder in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are kept up-to-date and clearly visible to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors can access the information from all pages …

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

If you need help displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

• How To Configure WordPress Widgets On Your Sidebar

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Legal forms)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms

Another option is to download a set of legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new 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 the pages to your server as previously described.

Go here for more details:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates

WordPress Legal Plugins

In addition to using templates, you can simplify things using a plugin.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users that you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages)

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

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

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your site.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your legal terms.
• New Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

You can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, review sites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)

You can also select from several pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress 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 about this handy plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin that includes over 20 customizable compliance pages for your online business …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro 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 Use
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin – 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 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 (even sites that you decide to sell).

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, then 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 protected!

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

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or endorsing online. Your digital 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice here. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your specific business.

Legal Resources

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission 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 …

• 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
• 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 above to quickly add essential legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and cost-effective methods and resources.

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