Tag: WordPress Legal Pages

As a website owner, you do not want to learn the hard way that you have done something illegal.

As the digital way of life continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important that you try to stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence plays a significant part in your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has ramifications for several business categories, including:

• Any form of advertising, like contextual advertising
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creators
• Blogging
• 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 third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of advertising or online merchant networks.

If your website is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

In this article, we discuss the importance of having a legally compliant website and provide simple ways to make your WordPress website or blog compliant.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if these scenarios were to take place:

• A customer has a heart attack after they use your online fitness program.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives someone an adverse reaction.
• You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their website.
• There is no statement on your website making visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing and could receive a financial benefit if they purchase it.
• You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and try to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy of a product in your review.
• Your website publishes adult content and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider too these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a significant $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to issue everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer received a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• 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 independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had breached at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risks of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business has the right legal pages and information accessible to site users.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services

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

You are required to let your site users know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you engage with.

Here are just some examples:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your site with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your services using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products through places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you are required to add a number of legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling products through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially if you plan to sell or promote products online using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many sites are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As is already the case, 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 selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your site complies with all FTC regulations and guidelines.

There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide 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 the law)

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you plan to develop social networking applications that integrate with your site, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then 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, 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 are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business.

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

What Legal Information Does Your Website Need To Be Legally Compliant?

If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your site will help your site stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and third-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

As well as the above, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the following pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website or blog provides general content about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Discloses to users that you will not receive compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you may receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Review/Sample Copy – Lets your readers know that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re reviewing.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to readers that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you should consult lawyers 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 add them to your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload these pages for you.

We recommend adding a legals directory to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

You can then easily add a link to your legal pages from your WordPress site using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

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

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your WordPress sidebar here:

• How To Use Widgets

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

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

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages)

These legal templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with simple search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates FTC regulations and guidelines brought into effect on March 2012)
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

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

More info:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages

Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using templates, you can simplify things by using WordPress plugins.

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

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If manually creating legal pages for your website feels too time-consuming for you, then consider using WP Legal Pages …

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

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

• Built-in Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of the legal pages you will 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, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will then be 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 lockdown. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear in your WP dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site drop down menu)

Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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

Go here to learn more about this handy plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …

For a detailed article about this plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(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 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 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 one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, 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 safe!

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

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

***

As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online, it’s important that your site complies with government regulations and any terms of service and guidelines required by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or endorse online. Your website must comply with a number of regulations, some of which you may not even 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with the law concerning your specific business.

Additional Information

Here is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your site may require to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC 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
• 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
• United States Copyright Office

Also …

• Google 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 legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your site using inexpensive solutions.

***