How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Is your website compliant? Do you know if your site is breaking any laws, or contravening the Terms of Service (TOS) of any companies whose products or services you are using or endorsing?

As the digital economy continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important to try and stay informed about what’s happening and ensure that your site remains legal, especially if having an online presence plays a significant part in your overall business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also referred to as the BBB. Search online “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 laws has implications for various online business categories, including:

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

If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in many advertising or online merchant networks.

If your website is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this guide is to help make you aware that your website(s) may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern businesses online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of other providers whose products or services you may be selling on your site, and that there are solutions for WordPress that can help your sites become compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. As stated earlier, the purpose of this article is 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 governing business practices online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party companies whose services or products you advertise on your website or blog

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

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

A person has a heart attack after they use your online fitness program.
The skin care products you promote as an affiliate marketer gives someone skin rashes.
You’ve informed subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you will do with their personal details.
Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
There is no statement on your website or blog making visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re marketing that you could get paid a commission if visitors purchase via your link.
You don’t spell out the terms and conditions of your refund and return policies.
A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are all fake and decides to sue you as a result.
You did not disclose that you received a free copy in a product review.
Your website includes adult information and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

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

A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would have to give up their personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
A social networking app developer was slapped with a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it 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% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were in violation of 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program with the violation, 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 risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

CPA or PPA Marketer
MLM Networker
Affiliate Marketer
AdSense Publisher
Info Product Marketer
Amazon Affiliate
e-Commerce Store Owner
Publisher Of Adult Content
Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

It’s vitally important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog stays fully compliant with the law.

Complying With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

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

You must let your site users know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your website, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will engage with online.

For example:

Google requires your site to display legal information when using their products. This includes using services such as Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue online with your blog using Google AdSense …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your business via Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

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

(Policy requirements product vendors selling via ClickBank)

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

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many business are still unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

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

There are many business resources that can provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide a number of references and links to useful resources at the end of this article …

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

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you plan to develop social networking applications for your site users, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and many others require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Apps for social networks also require compliance)

If you are unsure as to whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
If you plan to promote anything on your site using affiliate marketing, or making money online with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to include on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
If you have been wondering if “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies)

Common Legal Pages To Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If you suspect that your web site falls short in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your site will help your business keep out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and help to avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

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

Additionally, you may want to look into adding any of these compliance pages where applicable:

Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products and services)
Anti-Spam Policy
Earnings Disclaimer
External Links Policy
Health Disclaimers (if your website provides general health or medical content)
Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

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

No Material Connection – This lets visitors know that you are not being paid for writing the content.
Affiliate Links – Discloses to visitors that you will receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through an affiliate link.
Review/Sample Copy – Lets site users be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
Third Party Advertising – Informs readers 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.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Website

Ideally, you should consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been created, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website

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 folder in your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder (e.g. via FTP) …

(Upload legal pages to your web server using FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

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

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

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar, see this tutorial:

Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar Navigation Section

Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

More info:

Find Legal Forms

Another option is to download a package of cut and paste legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Templates)

These 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 Page Templates include:

Anti-Spam Policy
Copyright Notice
Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
DMCA Compliance
FTC Compliance
Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page for every legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as previously described.

More information:

Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

As well as using templates, you can keep things really simple using a plugin.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress users you may be interested in checking out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

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

This plugin is not free, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you a great deal of time.

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

Pre-written Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
Very Quick And Easy To Use – 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 completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
Easy To Edit Pages – Content editor lets you edit all legal pages like every 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 pages when you publish.
Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other WordPress page.
Forced Options – Force page lock down. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when user agrees to your legal terms.
Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will appear in your dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review websites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Page Type)

You can also choose from a number of built-in legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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 this handy plugin:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

complete website compliance & disclaimer solution …

Go here to learn more about the plugin:

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. Your legal pages can be 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 or flip).

Go here to learn more:

Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your website 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 legal content, or a WordPress legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

***

As stated earlier, if you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of 3rd-party products and services that you may decide to promote or sell online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, 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?

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we provide no legal advice. Do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Resources

Here is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what may be required of your website to remain compliant and meet its legal obligations: