Tag: WordPress Legal Pages

Is your website legal? Do you know if you are breaking any rules or regulations, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are recommending or using?

As the digital realm continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to try and stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your web presence is important in the success of your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for profit, then you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the (US based) BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(Better Business Bureau Website)

These laws has ramifications for several online business categories, including:

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

If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank will not allow you to list digital products, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could reject web applications, and you will not be allowed to participate in a range of advertising or online merchant networks.

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

In this guide, we look at why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog using simple resources and plugins.

Is Your Site Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations wherever your business operates in.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if the following were to occur:

• A user has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness program.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not clearly spelled out what you plan to do with it.
• Someone steals your content and publishes it on their site.
• You did not tell your site visitors that you are recommending a product as an affiliate and will get paid a commission if visitors buy via your affiliate link.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund and return policies.
• Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decide to sue you as a result.
• You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy in a product review.
• Your site publishes adult-related information and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underage children.

Consider also these real case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• 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 massive $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, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation 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 whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

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

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Promoter
• AdWords User
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

It’s imperative to ensure that your digital presence complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With Third-Party Services

Complying with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.

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

For example:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your sites with Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

Or promoting your services via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell products online using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale in their network …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policy statements on your site, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by ensuring that your website complies with all FTC guidelines.

There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you comply with FTC requirements. See the references and useful resources section at the end of this article for more information …

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

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to create applications that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others with information about various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services on your site using affiliate marketing, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have ever wondered if “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 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

Common Legal Pages To Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance

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

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help you keep out of trouble with many consumer protection agencies and external providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to look into adding one or more of the pages listed below 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 provides health or medical content)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms (e.g. if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

• No Material Connection – Discloses to your readers that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Discloses to visitors that you may receive compensation if they buy through your affiliate link.
• Sample Or review Copy – Discloses to your readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will consult a lawyer or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once this has been done, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal content 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 in your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(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 your visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that visitors have access to legal information from every page …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar menu and footer in WordPress using widgets here:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In The WordPress Sidebar Area

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut & paste legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal pages feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with a quick 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 Website Legal Page Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• 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 WordPress page for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described previously.

More information:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using templates, another option is to use plugins.

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

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal web pages manually, then consider using a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages instead …

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

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

• Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other page on your website.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks when the user agrees to your terms.
• New Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

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

(WP Legal Pages – 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 with products, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

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

Go here to learn more about this useful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable compliance page templates for your web presence …

Learn more about this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(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 Use
• 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 powered site. Your legal pages can be installed and set up on your site in less than one minute 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).

For more information, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your site to be protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal documentation, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines provided by 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or using online. Your internet presence must comply with a wide range of regulations, some of which you may not even 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, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

References And Legal Resources

Below is a useful list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply 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
• Better Business Bureau – 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

See Also …

• 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

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog.

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