How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

One of the worst situations a business owner can find themselves in is to break the law.

As the digital way of life continues growing at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s absolutely essential that you try to stay on top of what’s happening and make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence plays a significant part in your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your site for material gain, you will need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online for information about “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau)

The new laws has implications for various online business activities, including:

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

If your website does not display certain pages (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could reject web applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to legal requirements, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you may be using on your site, and that there are plugin-based solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your websites become compliant, such as the plugins that we list further below.

Is Your Site Legally Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice about your website or business. 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 in your country or region.

Why Having A Compliant Website Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone suffers a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate gives a number of users skin rashes.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t clearly spelled out what you plan to do with their details.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making your visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re recommending that you may earn an affiliate commission if they end up buying using your affiliate link.
• You did not spell out the terms of your refund policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are fake and tries to sue you.
• You have not disclosed that you received a free copy of a product you are reviewing.
• Your website contains adult-related content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider also these real examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their 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 without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape UIDs. Many marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had infringed at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 entirely to the Google program whose policies they had violated, 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 Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords User
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your online business has the right legal pages and clearly displayed to site visitors.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services

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

You are obligated to let your visitors know that your business complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases consumer trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you engage with.

For example:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue with your website with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense online advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell information-based products using places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages to your site before your products are approved for selling via their networks …

(Policy requirements for selling digital products through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially if you plan to sell products online using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Site Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.

Many sites provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

(It’s important to structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Don’t Forget Social Media Apps

If you plan to develop apps for your website users, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others will require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of sites like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services online as an affiliate marketer, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or using Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve been wondering 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, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Common Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site

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

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and third-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues):

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimer Pages
• 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:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides financial information)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Video/Audio Terms (if you provide users with access to download videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your site. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets site users be aware that you will not receive any type of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and purchase through your affiliate link.
• Sample Or review Copy – Explains to site users that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets users know that you have been compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Site

Ideally, you should consult lawyers or a legal firm and ask them to prepare the content of your legal documents. Once you have this completed, there are several ways to add them to your website.

Upload Legal 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 these pages for you.

We recommend adding a legal directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this folder using FTP …

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

You can then add links to these legal pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Where To Display Legal Web Pages On Your Site

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to your visitors. You can add these to the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users will be able to access legal information from every page …

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

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

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar

Using Ready-Made Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)

For more details, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to purchase a package of cut and paste legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

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

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & 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 page on your website for each legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload these to your web server as described previously.

For more details, go here:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

In addition to using templates, you can simplify things using WordPress plugins.

Here are some great plugins for WordPress users that you should check out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing WordPress Legal Pages instead …

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 a great deal of time and effort.

Some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages are:

• Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• 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 – Includes customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages just like every other page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
• 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 or post lockdown. Page unlocks only when user agrees to your legal terms.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

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

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

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

With WPLegal Pages, you have the option of creating legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites, affiliate sites, medical sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)

Select from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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

Visit this website for more details about this great plugin:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users that includes over 20 customizable compliance page templates for your digital presence …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 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. 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 this plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell or flip).

More information:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring legal experts to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your site to be protected!

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

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with government regulations and the terms of service and guidelines required by 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or recommend online. Your website must comply with a wide range of laws and regulatory guidelines, many 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

Legal Information

Here is a time-saving list of sites we suggest you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant 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
• BBB – 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
• US Copyright Office

Additionally …

• 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
• Google 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 why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site using inexpensive resources and plugins.

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