How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Is your website legal? Do you know if your site is breaking any rules or regulations, or breaching the Terms of Service (TOS) of any 3rd-party companies whose products or services you endorse or use?

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

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for commercial gain, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the BBB, or Better Business Bureau. 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)

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

Any form of advertising, e.g. display advertising
Retarget Marketing
Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
Affiliate Marketing
Product Creation
Bloggers
etc.

If you do not include certain 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, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising or online merchant networks.

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

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website(s) may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business, the importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be offering on your site, and that there are solutions for WordPress that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the plugins discussed further below.

Is Your Site Breaking The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. You must carry out your own due diligence and we recommend consulting a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Are you at risk? Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

A user suffers a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness workout.
The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
You’ve informed your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t spelled out exactly what you’ll do with it.
Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their own website.
There is no statement on your website making your site visitors aware that you are recommending a product as an affiliate that you will receive a commission if they purchase via your affiliate link.
You did not spell out the terms and conditions of your refund/return policies.
A visitor claims your testimonials are misleading and tries to sue you.
You did not disclose that you received a free copy in your product review.
Your website includes adult-related content and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underage children from accessing it.

Consider too the real examples of costly compliance breaches listed below:

A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information to complete a debt reduction offer. Cost = $390,000.
A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private details about children.
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 randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least 2 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program they had violated, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to become exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

it’s important to ensure that your digital presence remains legally compliant.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade emphasize the importance of observing the terms and policies of third-party service providers.

You must let your visitors know that your website complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your website, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you interact with.

For example:

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

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue online with your blog with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your products using Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell information products through companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant networks, you are required to add legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements)

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and disclosures on your site, especially if you plan to sell products using product testimonials or endorsements …

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has already been the case, this typically results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any type of selling online, therefore, it’s best not to take any 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 FTC regulations.

There are many business resource sites that can provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide a number of references at the end of this article …

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

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to develop applications for your site users, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with information about your legal pages …

(Apps for social networks also require compliance)

If you are not sure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
If you are considering promoting services or products on your site using affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk 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 websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines)

What Legal Pages Does Your Website Need To Be Covered Against Legal Compliance Issues?

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

Adding the following compliance pages to your site will keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection agencies and 3rd-party service providers, and even help to avoid potential legal issues):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to consider adding one or more of these compliance pages:

Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
Anti-Spam Policy
Compensation Disclosure
External Links Policy
Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides information about financial areas or income opportunities)
Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
Media Terms (if you provide users with access to media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of content disclosure is important. For example:

No Material Connection – Lets users know that you’re not being paid for writing the article.
Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you will receive compensation if they purchase through your affiliate links.
Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to site users that you have received a review or sample copy of the product.
Sponsored Post – Informs readers that you were compensated in some way to write the article.
Third Party Advertising – Informs 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Compliance Pages To Your Website

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

Upload Legal Pages Manually

If someone prepares and delivers the legal verbiage for you in standard web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your site, or have someone upload these pages for you.

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

(Upload legal pages to your web server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly accessible to visitors. You can add links to your legal pages to your WordPress sidebar (or place them in the footer of your website) to ensure that users will be able to access the information from all of your pages …

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

We have written a detailed tutorial on adding links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress here:

Adding Widgets To The WordPress Blog Sidebar Navigation Menu

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

Visit this site to learn more:

Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of legal templates created by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages)

These legal templates feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your web pages.

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

Anti-Spam Policy
Copyright Notice
Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
DMCA Compliance
FTC Compliance
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service & 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 WordPress page for every legal form you want to add to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described earlier.

Go here for more information:

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

Plugins – Legal Pages

As well as using legal templates, another option for adding legal pages to your site is to use a plugin.

Here are some great plugins for WordPress-driven websites you may be interested in checking out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

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

This plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced 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 reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages:

Built-in Legal Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages like any page on your website.
Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your content when published.
Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any WordPress page.
Forced Options – Force page lock down. When users agree to your legal terms, the page unlocks.
Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will display inside your WP dashboard section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)

Select from various built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – 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

To learn more about the benefits of using this powerful plugin, go here:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable legal page templates for your site …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

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 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. 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 the plugin on all of your websites.

More information:

Legal Suite Pro

If using the services of a lawyer to create your legal pages is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic type of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a legal expert.

We want your site to be protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-drafted legal forms, or a legal pages plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online, it’s important that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and the guidelines and terms of service required by third-party products and services that you may be promoting or using online. Your website must comply with a number of regulations, 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 offer no legal advice. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.

Legal Information

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

And …

We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand why it’s important to have a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site.

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