How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

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

As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s absolutely vital that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and ensure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if having an online presence plays an important part in your business strategy.

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

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

These laws has legal consequences for several business activities, including:

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

If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a range of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.

This article explains the importance of having a compliant website and how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your site using simple legal resources and solutions.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking The Law?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice in this article. As stated earlier, this article is designed only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal policies in accordance with the laws governing business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you promote

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider for a moment what the implications to your business would be if these scenarios were to take place:

• A user has a cardiac arrest after they use your online fitness program.
• The skin care lotion you sell as an affiliate marketer gives someone an allergic reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you will do with their details.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website making your site visitors aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate that you may derive financial benefits if they buy it.
• You have not spelled out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Your visitors claim that your testimonials are false and try to sue you because of it.
• You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy in a product review.
• Your website contains adult content and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underaged persons from accessing it.

Consider too the following documented examples of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete an offer they were promoting. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer copped 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 information.
• 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 $$$ 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 breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% had broken at least 2 of Google’s policies, and more than 40% had broken 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 easy it is to risk becoming a target of non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your digital presence is fully compliant with the law.

Compliance With 3rd-Party Companies Terms And Policies

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

You are expected to let your site users know that your website complies with laws and recommended guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your website, it’s also required in most cases by most companies you will do business with.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display legal information when using many of their services and product features. This includes using features such as Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your website with Google AdSense advertising …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell products online with places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add various legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for sale in their marketplace …

(Policy requirements product vendors using ClickBank)

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

(FTC – consumer guidelines 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 sites are unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As is already the case, this will most likely prompt the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business is not located in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business by ensuring that your website complies with FTC guidelines.

A number of online resources provide guidelines and examples on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your site comply with FTC requirements. We provide references and links to useful resources to some of these 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 Apps

If you plan to create apps for your site, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others will require you to provide access to various 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 companies like Google, Facebook, etc., then you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything online using affiliate marketing, or generating revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your website with Google AdWords, 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 terminated.
• If you have 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, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

What Legal Pages Does Your Website Need To Be Compliant?

If you suspect that your website falls short in areas of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

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

• About Us
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Disclaimer Pages
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into adding any of these pages where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides health or medical advice)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Use Of Media (if you provide users with access to download videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding correct web content disclosure information is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Informs users that you will not be receiving any type of payment for writing the content.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers know that you may derive some form of financial or similar kind of benefit if they act on your recommendation and buy through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Explains to visitors that you have received a review or sample copy of the product you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets your visitors know that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
• 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 Legal Content To Your WordPress Site

Ideally, you will have a lawyer prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once you have this done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages To Your Site

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

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

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

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

(Custom WordPress Menu Feature)

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

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

We have created a detailed tutorial about adding links to pages on your sidebar and footer using widgets here:

• Adding Widgets To The WordPress Sidebar

Ready-Made Legal Templates

You can easily find downloadable attorney-prepared internet forms and agreements by searching online, or visiting sites like this one:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Visit this site to learn more:

• FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• 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 every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your web server as described earlier.

For more information, go here:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Page Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, another option is to use plugins.

Here are some plugins for WordPress users that you should check out:

WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

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

WordPress Legal Pages is not a free plugin, but it’s a very affordable and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website and save you a great deal of time.

Here are just some of the reasons to consider using WordPress Legal Pages plugin:

• Built-in Templates – Over 20 built-in legal templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of your basic legal pages in a few minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Easy To Edit Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like every other WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like every other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. When the user agrees to your terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – The plugin is updated with new features when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will display inside your main navigation area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, review sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page type drop down menu)

Choose from several built-in legal templates …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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 this plugin, visit this website:

• WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your digital business …

Go here to learn more about this plugin:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin For WordPress)

Legal Suite Pro 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 – 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 plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use the plugin on all of your websites.

Go here for more details:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring lawyers to create your online legal documentation is currently out of your budget, then consider implementing at least some basic kind of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.

We want your business to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or use one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal forms, or plugins - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or offer online. If your website doesn’t comply 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?

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot provide legal advice on our website. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Additional Legal Information

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 – BBB
• 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

Additionally …

• Google Analytics Help – Policy requirements for Google Analytics Advertising Features
• Google AdSense Program Policies Explained
• Google AdSense Help – Required Content
• Google AdWords – Information Collection And Use
• AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
• ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
• Facebook Platform Policies

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand why it’s important to have a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site using inexpensive resources and WordPress plugins.

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