How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

As a website owner, the last thing you want is to learn the hard way that you have broken the law.

As the cybersphere continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you try to stay on top of what’s happening and ensure that your website remains compliant, especially if your online presence plays an important part in your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, then you 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 (BBB). Look up “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet to learn more.

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

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

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

Without certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising or online merchant networks.

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

In this article, we look at why it’s important to have a compliant website and how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website.

Is Your Website Compliant?

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice. As stated earlier, this article is designed only to make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal policies in accordance with federal, regional or local laws that govern business and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you offer

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• Someone has a cardiac arrest after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives a number of users an adverse reaction.
• You’ve told your subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not defined what you will do with the information you’ve collected.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their website.
• There is no statement on your site making your site visitors aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you will get paid financial benefits if visitors purchase it.
• You didn’t spell out the terms of your refund and return policies.
• Online visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are fake and try to sue you.
• You didn’t disclose in a product review that you received a free copy of the product.
• Your site contains adult-related content and you did not take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider now the actual examples of costly compliance breaches below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete his offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• 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 private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites picked at random, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had breached at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had breached 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 notices or lose access entirely to the Google program whose policies with the infringement, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a business owner can easily become exposed to the risk of litigation through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) or PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Product Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

You need to ensure that your digital presence stays fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With Third-Party Services - ToS, Policies, etc.

Leading online companies and government agencies that regulate trade in most countries emphasize the need and importance of complying with the terms and policies of 3rd-party service providers.

You are obligated to let your site visitors know that your business complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you do business with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires websites to display certain information when using their products or features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Generating revenue with your WordPress blogs using Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

Or promoting your services via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products through merchants like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for sale …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission also requires that you add clear disclaimers and policy statements on your website, especially if you plan to use testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses 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 typically 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 plan to do any type of money-making activity 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 by making sure that your site is compliant with FTC regulations and guidelines.

Many business resource sites provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. See the resources section at the end of this article for more information …

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

Social Media Applications Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to develop applications for your website, social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Facebook developer app – policy requirements)

• If you are not sure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products online via affiliate marketing, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, 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 their Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts shut down.
• If you’ve ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to act now and take proper precautions to protect yourself and your business interests.

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

What Legal Information Pages Do I Need To Add To My Website To Be Compliant?

If your website is falling short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

Adding the following legal pages to your site should help keep you out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and 3rd-party service providers, and avoid potential legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to look into implementing one or more of the following pages:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides information about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Video/Audio Terms Of Use (if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Discloses to users that you will not receive compensation for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors know that you will derive some form of financial or similar kind of benefit if they buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets your visitors know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Lets visitors be aware that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
• 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 online publishers to display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

Adding Legal Content To Your Website

Ideally, you should consult lawyers and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal content for you as standard web pages (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend adding a legal directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory (e.g. via FTP) …

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

Displaying Legal Pages On Your Website

Make sure that your legal pages are fully up-to-date and clearly visible to all site visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your site) to ensure that visitors can access the information from every web page …

(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 using widgets here:

• How To Use Widgets

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms)

Go here for more info:

• FindLegalForms.com

Another option is to download a package of website legal templates designed by attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Page Templates)

Cut & Paste website templates were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a quick 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 Page Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new WordPress page 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 the pages to your server as described previously.

Go here to learn more:

• Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using copy & paste templates, you can keep things really simple using plugins.

Here are some great WordPress plugins that you may be interested in checking out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WP Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal pages manually, then consider choosing a plugin like WP Legal Pages instead …

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

Here are just some of the benefits of using the WordPress Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in a few 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 – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any page on your site.
• Shortcodes – You can 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 check box and delete and manage these like any WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When users agree to the terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with every new version.

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites with products, review sites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Type of Site drop down menu)

Choose from various pre-written legal templates …

(WP 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

To learn more about using this useful plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro 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 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 secured rights to high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers and packaged them 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 the plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

More info:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If using the services of a lawyer to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford to hire a lawyer.

We want your website to be safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator software below (it’s FREE!), or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-written legal documents, or plugins as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator Software lets you easily generate necessary legal documents for your website including ToS, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website complies with all regulations and the terms of service and guidelines of third-party sites that you may decide to promote or advertise online. If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website fully complies with the law pertaining to your business.

Legal Resources And References

Here is a time-saving list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to remain compliant and meet legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• 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
• United States Copyright Office

And …

• 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

We hope this article has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website.

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