How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

One of the worst things that can happen to you as a business owner is to break the law.

Online laws are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to anyone who sells, markets or promotes goods and services online. Every website owner risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about legal requirements will not excuse someone from taking legal action against your business.

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

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – BBB)

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

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

If you do not include certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to sell digital products, PayPal may suspend your account, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in many advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

If your online business is not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website or blog are subject to legal requirements, the importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose services or products you may be endorsing online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugins listed further below.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice. You must carry out your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Is your business at risk? Consider for one minute what could happen to your business in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after they use your online workout program.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not defined what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone steals content from your site and publishes it on their site.
• There is no statement on your site letting visitors know that you’re an affiliate for the product you’re recommending that you may derive a financial benefit if visitors purchase it.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your return policies.
• Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are fake and try to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose that you have received a free copy of a product in your review.
• Your site includes adult information and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider also these documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer was slapped with 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 internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independent 2010 study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% had broken at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 to the Google program whose policies with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to risk being a target of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

It’s vitally important to ensure that your digital presence stays legally compliant.

Compliance With Third-Party Companies

Compliance with 3rd-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 consumer 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 certain information if using their services. This includes using services like Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue with your WordPress blogs with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell products online via companies such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for using ClickBank)

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

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Website To Comply

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute site owners in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any type of money-making activity online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. you should protect your business interests by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC regulations.

You can find many sites that can provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site meet FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …

(You must structure your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of laws and regulations)

Social Media Apps Also Require Compliance

If you are planning to develop social networking applications for your website users, you will also be required to provide sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others with access to your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are unsure whether you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of service providers like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote products or services online using affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon advertising, or driving visitors to your website using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you are required to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk having your accounts terminated.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use)

What Compliance Information Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Compliant?

If your website or blog lacks in areas of compliance, then this section will help you.

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

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

Additionally, you may want to consider implementing any of these pages:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides general money-making advice)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Use Of Media (if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add correct disclosure information to your website. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets readers be aware that you’re not receiving compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you will be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Informs visitors that you have received a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that lets readers be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets your visitors know that you’re using online behavioral tracking technology. This is required to comply with the “enhanced notice” the Better Business Bureau has been requiring website publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your Website

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

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

We recommend adding a legal folder to your web server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this directory via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

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

(WordPress Menu)

Where To Display Legal Pages On Your Website

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

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

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In The Website

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

To learn more, visit this website:

• Find Legal Forms

Another option is to purchase a set of cut & paste website legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal 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 legal pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new 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 web server as previously described.

More information:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Page Plugins

As well as using templates, another option is to use WordPress plugins.

Here are some great legal plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

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

WP Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a reasonably low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will help make the task of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you many headaches.

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

• Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of 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.
• Customizable Pages – Includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit legal pages like every other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to any of your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. Page unlocks only when users agree to your 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 in your WordPress dashboard area …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Area)

You can create legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, affiliate websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

Select from various pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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 to learn more this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable legal page templates for your web presence …

More info:

• Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 & Conditions
• Earnings Disclaimer

(Legal Suite Pro – 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. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use the plugin on all of your sites.

Go here for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford legal services.

We want your website to be legally protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (for FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal content, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate essential legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) for 3rd-party services and products that you may decide to promote or recommend online. If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, 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, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements concerning your specific business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a time-saving list of sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to stay compliant and meet legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Better Business Bureau Website
• 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

See Also …

• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website.

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