Tag: WordPress Legal Pages

If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you are doing something illegal.

As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence plays an important part in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your site for profit, you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau)

The introduction of these new laws has ramifications for various online business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, including contextual advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote a number of advertising or online marketing networks.

If you are not in compliance, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that your site(s) may be required to comply with various legalities, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be selling online, and that there are solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugins that we list further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice. As stated earlier, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you endorse

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• A user has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people allergic reactions.
• You’ve told subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not informed them exactly what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
• There is no statement on your site letting your site visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re selling and will earn financial benefits if visitors end up buying through your link.
• You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Visitors claim your testimonials are misleading and decide to sue you.
• You did not disclose that you were given a free copy of the product in your review.
• Your site contains adult-related content and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider now these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up their personal information (including credit card information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
• 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 gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in breach 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 cautions or lose access entirely 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 becoming targeted for non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords User
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

It’s vitally important to ensure that your website or blog is fully compliant with the law.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

Compliance with third-party companies terms and policies is important.

You must let your visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required by most companies you do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display certain information when using many of their services. This includes using services like Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your website using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense display advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your services using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell digital products with merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their network …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to include clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially when concerning the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this typically 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 business 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 by making sure that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines.

You can find many resources sites for businesses that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you plan to create social networking applications for your website, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything on your site as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages 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 include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to avoid becoming a magnet for litigation.

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

What Legal Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Website To Be Protected From Legal Compliance Issues?

If your website or blog lacks in areas 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 consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues):

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

In addition to the pages above, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the following pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general advice about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (e.g. if you allow users to download 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 – Lets visitors be aware that you will not receive for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Notifies your readers that you may derive some form of financial or similar form of benefit if they buy through your affiliate link.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets site users be aware that you have received a sample or review copy of the product you’re writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to your readers that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
• 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your WordPress Website

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Site

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

We recommend creating a legals directory on your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and clearly accessible to all visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into your WordPress sidebar (or the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from all pages …

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

To learn more about adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer, see this step-by-step tutorial:

• Using Widgets In WordPress

Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-drafted internet forms and agreements by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

More info:

• Find Legal Forms

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects new Federal Trade Commission regulations that came into effect in March 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google & DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

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

To learn more, visit this website:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using cut & paste templates, you can keep things very simple using WordPress plugins.

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

WordPress Legal Pages

(WP Legal Pages Plugin)

If setting up legal pages manually seems too time-consuming for you, then consider using WP Legal Pages …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s an affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you many headaches.

Here are just some of the benefits of using WP Legal Pages:

• Pre-written Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other page on your site.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your WordPress pages and the information is then 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 users agree to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Create different legal pages)

Select from various pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages – Pre-configured 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 plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 Plugin 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. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of lawyers to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your business to be safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal content, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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 we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online, you need to ensure that your website complies with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party sites that you may be promoting or endorsing online. Your website or blog must comply with a whole set of laws and regulatory guidelines, 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, 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 is compliant with the law pertaining to your specific business.

Legal Resources & References

Below is a useful list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau
• 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

See Also …

• Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• 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 the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.

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