Tag: WordPress Legal Pages

One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.

As the digital economy continues growing at an overwhelming speed and rules keep changing, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is an integral part of your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for commercial gain, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

The introduction of these new laws affect several online business activities, including:

• Any kind of advertising, e.g. Google AdWords or AdSense
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Product Creation
• Blogging
• etc.

If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will reject your applications, and you will not be allowed to enrol in a range of advertising and online marketing networks.

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

In this article, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website using simple methods and solutions.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice about your website or business. As stated earlier, the purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws that govern your business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of companies whose services or products you use

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider for a minute what could happen to your business if the following scenarios were to happen:

• A person has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you plan to do with their personal details.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their website.
• You haven’t advised your visitors that you are an affiliate for the product you are recommending and could earn financial benefits if visitors buy using your link.
• You haven’t spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you.
• You did not disclose that you have received a free copy in a product review.
• Your site publishes adult content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider also the documented case studies of costly compliance breaches described:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer received 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 Users IDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in violation of at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had infringed 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 with warnings 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 a website owner can easily become exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords User
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business stays fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

All of the leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade in various countries emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of service providers.

You are required to let your site visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you engage with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display certain information when using their services and product features. This includes using features like Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your WordPress blogs with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell information-based products using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add certain legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank vendors)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and statements to visitors, especially regarding the use of product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your site complies with FTC guidelines and regulations.

There are many online business resources that can provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. See the additional resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps - Don’t Forget These

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

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not you are 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 are considering promoting products or services on your site via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, 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 - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, 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 Do I Need To Add To My Site To Be Compliant?

If you suspect that your web site is falling short in terms of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your website should help your business stay out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and even help you avoid possible legal issues):

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

As well as the above, you may want to look into adding any of the following pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (if your website provides health or medical information)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right type of web content disclosure is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Discloses to site users that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and purchase through an affiliate link.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you have been given a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Informs your readers that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets visitors know 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.

Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the content of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Uploading Legal Web Pages To Your Site

If someone prepares 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 using FTP …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the WordPress sidebar (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that users will be able to access legal information from all your pages …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar using widgets here:

• How To Add Widgets To WordPress

Using Ready-Made Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms

Another option is to download a set of website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste 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 simple quick search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• 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 WordPress page 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 the pages to your server as described previously.

More info:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress-driven websites and blogs worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium WordPress plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you loads of headaches.

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

• Built-in 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 clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages just like any other WP page.
• Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item is added to your main dashboard area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

This allows you to create, edit and view legal pages from the admin area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page type menu)

Select from several built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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

To learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin, go here:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal templates for your online business …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress 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 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. Your legal pages can be 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 websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

To learn more, visit this site:

• Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of legal experts to create your online legal documentation 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 FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal page templates, or a WordPress plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

***

As stated earlier, if you make money online, you need to ensure that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines required by third-party services and products that you may be promoting or offering online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.

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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

References And Legal Resources

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

• 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• United States Copyright Office

In Addition …

• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site.

***