Tag: Make WordPress Site Legally Compliant

Is your website legally compliant? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you are recommending or selling?

Online laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes products and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not excuse someone from taking legal action against your business.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect various online business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, including pay-per-click advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook will reject your applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in a number of advertising or online marketing networks.

You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.

In this guide, we discuss the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever you do business.

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider for a minute what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you are recommending and will derive financial benefits if they buy it.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your refund or return policies.
• Visitors claim the testimonials on your site are false and try to sue you.
• You did not disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your website contains adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider also the actual examples of costly compliance breaches below:

• 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 his offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’re now required to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — 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 private information about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were in breach of 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% 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk being targeted for litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s vitally important to ensure that your online business has the right legal pages and information accessible to all you site visitors.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies

Leading online companies and government trade regulatory agencies emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of service providers.

You are obligated to let your site users know that your website complies with laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required by most companies you will engage with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display legal information if using their products or features. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue online with your blogs using Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products with merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

A number of online resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide references and links to useful resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

(Structuring your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These

If you plan to create apps that will integrate with your website, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure 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 plan to promote services or products on your site via affiliate marketing, or make money online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your site with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

Basic Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site

If you suspect that your web site falls short in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and external service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to consider including any of the following pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides general health or medical information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Lets your readers be aware that you’re not receiving any kind of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to visitors that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets your visitors be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Informs users that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
• 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website

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

Upload Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal content for you in HTML format, 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 your legal pages to this folder via FTP …

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu)

Displaying Legal Web Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are up-to-date and clearly accessible to your visitors. You can add these to the WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your site) to ensure that users have access to legal information from every web page …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your WP sidebar here:

• Using Widgets In WordPress

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more information, go here:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to download a set of cut and paste legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use: includes inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

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 your legal pages to your server as previously described.

Go here for more details:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things really simple by using a plugin.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Legal Pages)

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

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

Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages plugin are:

• Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your 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 site.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When users agree to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your WP dashboard menu …

(WP Legal Pages – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

You have the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, niche websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal page types)

Choose from several built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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

For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, visit this site:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable compliance pages for your site …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress powered site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your business 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 ready-made legal page templates, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software allows you to quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you are making money online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole range of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

Additional Resources

Here is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your site 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
• 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

Additionally …

• Google 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 this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site.

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