How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

As a business owner, you do not want to find yourself on the wrong side of the law.

Internet laws, regulations, and guidelines are designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for profit, then you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the US-based Better Business Bureau, also called the BBB. Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The introduction of new laws has ramifications for several online business activities, including:

Any type of advertising, like Google AdWords
Retarget Marketing
Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
Affiliate Marketers
Product Creation
Blogging
etc.

Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed to enroll in most advertising and online marketing networks.

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

This article explains why it’s important to have a legally compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog.

Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. As previously stated, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern online business practices and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you advertise

Why It’s Important To Make Your Website Compliant

Consider for a minute what would happen to your business in the following scenarios:

Someone has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives people allergic reactions.
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 content from your website and publishes it on their site.
There is no statement on your website or blog telling your site visitors that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and will derive a commission if visitors purchase it.
You have not spelled out the terms of your refund/return policies.
Your visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are fake and try to sue you because of it.
You have not disclosed that you received a free copy in a product review.
Your website publishes adult content and you did not take sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider too the documented examples of costly compliance breaches described:

A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up their personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required 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 from mobile device address books without the owners’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes 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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least two 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how you could be exposed to the risks of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
MLM Networker
Affiliate Product Promoter
AdWords User
Info Product Marketer
Amazon Affiliate
EBay Seller
Publisher Of Adult Content
Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence is legally compliant.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Services

All of the big websites and government agencies that regulate trade in many countries emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

You must let your site visitors know that your website complies will all legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you will interact with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires websites to display legal information when using their products. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your sites using Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

Or promoting your site using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information-based products using places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for vendors using ClickBank)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires you to add clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is 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 unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often 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 is not physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

Many online business resources provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help you meet FTC requirements. We provide additional references 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 are planning to develop applications for your website users, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to various legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

If you are unsure as to whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
If you plan to promote services or products online as an affiliate marketer, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts suspended.
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 policies and guidelines)

Basic Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Website

If your website lacks in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following compliance pages to your website should keep your business out of trouble with most regulatory agencies and third-party service providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

About Us
Contact Page
Privacy Statement
Terms & Conditions
Disclaimer Pages
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

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

Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
Anti-Spam Policy
Earnings Disclaimer
External Links Policy
Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general health or medical content)
Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
Use Of Media (if you allow users to download videos or audio files on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the correct type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:

No Material Connection – Informs your visitors that you will not receive for writing the article.
Affiliate Links – Lets visitors be aware that you will receive compensation if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
Sample Or review Copy – Discloses to your readers that you have received a sample or review copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about.
Sponsored Post – Discloses to users that you were 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Site

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal content for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legals directory on your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are fully up-to-date and display clearly to visitors. You can insert these into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your website or blog) so that visitors can access the information from every web page …

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

To learn more about adding links to pages on your WP sidebar, see this step-by-step tutorial:

Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Site

Ready-Made Legal Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-drafted disclosures and website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

For more information, go here:

Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of website legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)

Cut & Paste website legal pages were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business details, then pasted into your web pages.

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

Anti-Spam Policy
Copyright Notice
Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
DMCA Compliance
Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission regulations and guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service (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 web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as previously described.

To learn more, visit this site:

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates

WordPress Legal Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things very simple using plugins.

Here are some great legal WordPress plugins worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported premium plugin that will make the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site much easier and save you time.

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

Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
Very 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.
Fully Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like every other WP page.
Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks only when users agree to your legal terms.
New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with every new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will appear inside your main WordPress dashboard menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

With WPLegal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site menu)

Select from various pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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 – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

total website compliance & disclaimer solution …

For more details go here:

Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 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 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 license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.

More info:

Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of legal experts to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then at least consider implementing some form of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your site to be legally safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider using 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)

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

***

As stated earlier, if you do any type of business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices and any terms of service and guidelines of 3rd-party services and products that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your website must comply with numerous regulations, many 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 are not providing legal advice. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.

References And Resources

Below is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to help you better understand what your business requires to comply and meet its legal obligations:

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.