WordPress Legal Pages Archives - Free WordPress Tutorials For Non-Techies

Is your WordPress website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking the law, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose services or products you are using or promoting?

Internet laws are designed to protect consumers and apply to anyone who markets, sells or promotes goods or services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

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 commercial gain, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the 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.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

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

Any kind of advertising, like Google AdWords
Retarget Marketing
Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
Affiliate Marketers
Product Creators
Bloggers
etc.

Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a range of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

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

This guide explains why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple and inexpensive legal resources and solutions.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice in this article. As stated earlier, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations governing business and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you recommend on your website

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider for one minute what would happen to your business if the following were to take place:

A user has a heart attack after using your online fitness workout.
The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives people allergic reactions.
Your opt-in list displays a statement that lets subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not defined what you plan to do with their personal details.
Someone steals your content and puts it up on their site.
There is no statement on your site making your visitors aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you could derive a sales commission if they purchase it.
You did not spell out the terms of your return policies.
Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are fake and try to sue you.
You haven’t disclosed in a product review that you were given a free copy of the product.
Your site contains adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged children.

Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:

A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
A social networking app developer was slapped with a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
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 independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had infringed at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 with warnings or lose access to the Google program with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could easily be exposed to the risk of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

CPC (Cost Per Conversion) Marketer
MLM Networker
Affiliate Marketer
AdWords User
Product Marketer
Amazon Affiliate
EBay Seller
Publisher Of Adult Content
Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

You need to make sure that your website or blog stays fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

Complying with third-party services terms and policies is important.

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

For example:

Google requires websites to display legal information if using many of their products. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Monetizing your sites using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

Or promoting your business via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information-based products with places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you are required to add various legal pages before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for vendors using ClickBank)

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

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this typically results in 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 plan to do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC regulations.

Many online business resources provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the references and resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you plan to develop apps for your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with access to 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 organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
If you plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

Essential Legal Pages To Include In Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and third-party providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

About Us
Contact Page
Privacy Policy
Terms And Conditions
Disclaimers
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into including any of these pages where applicable:

Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products or services)
Anti-Spam Policy
Earnings Disclaimer
External Links Policy
Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general health or medical advice)
Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
Media Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to download media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of disclosure to your website is important. For example:

No Material Connection – Informs readers that you will not receive for writing the article.
Affiliate Links – Lets visitors know that you will receive compensation if they purchase through an affiliate link.
Sample Or review Copy – Informs users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product you’re writing about.
Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you have been compensated in some way to write the post.
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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

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

Upload Legal Pages Manually

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

We recommend creating a legals directory in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all site visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to the sidebar (or the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors can access the information from every web page …

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

To learn more about displaying links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress using widgets, refer to this tutorial:

Configuring Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Menu

Legal Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared website forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to websites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More information:

Find Legal Forms – Legal forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a package of cut & paste legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal 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 details, then pasted into your legal pages.

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

Anti-Spam Policy
Copyright Notice
Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
DMCA Compliance
Federal Trade Commission Compliance
Privacy Policy
ToS & Conditions of Use: with inter- & intra-page redundancy, Contra Proferentem provision, reservation of rights, and exclusive social media admonition.

You can either create a new page for each 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.

More information:

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

In addition to using templates, you can keep things really simple using WordPress plugins.

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

WP Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

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

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

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

Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
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 any page on your website.
Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks only when users agree to your legal terms.
New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item is added to your main WP dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal page types)

Select from a number of pre-written legal templates …

(WP 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

For more details about using this WordPress plugin, go here:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs that contains over 20 customizable compliance templates for your online business …

For more details go here:

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

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 Service
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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

Go here for more information:

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.

We want your website to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal documents, or a WordPress legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

***

As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or offer online. Your website must comply with a whole set of laws and regulatory guidelines, 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with the law pertaining to your business.

Legal Resources

Here is a useful list of sites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what may be required of your website to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations:

Tag: WordPress Legal Pages

How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site