How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.

As the digital realm continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s absolutely vital that you try to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if having a digital presence is a significant factor in your business strategy.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 to regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, you need to follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the Better Business Bureau, also called 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 new laws has ramifications for several business activities, including:

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

If your site does not display certain pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank or JVZoo will not allow you to sell digital products, PayPal could suspend your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you won’t be allowed into most advertising and online marketing networks.

In addition, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.

The purpose of this post is to help make you aware that your website or blog may be subject to legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose products or services you may be selling online, and that there are easy solutions that can help your websites become fully compliant, such as the plugins that we discuss further below.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, the aim of this article is only to help make you aware that your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, regional or local laws and regulations that govern business practices online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose services or products you offer on your website or blog

Why Ensuring That Your Website Is Compliant Is Important

Consider for a minute what the implications to your business would be if these scenarios were to occur:

• A customer has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness workout.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link an adverse reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing prospective subscribers that you won’t sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you will do with it.
• Someone copies content from your website and publishes it on their own site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making visitors aware that you are an affiliate for the product you are recommending that you may get paid a commission if they purchase using your affiliate link.
• You don’t spell out the conditions of your return policies.
• A visitor claims your testimonials are misleading and decides to sue you.
• You have not disclosed that you received a free copy of the product in your review.
• Your website publishes adult content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider also these actual 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 (including credit card info 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 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 gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-chosen websites, more than 90% were in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 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 easy it is to risk being exposed to litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA (Cost Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdSense Publisher
• Niche Publisher
• Amazon Affiliate
• e-Commerce Store Owner
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Service Or Product Online

it’s important to ensure that your online business complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Compliance With Third-Party Services

Compliance with 3rd-party services terms and policies is important.

You are expected to let your site users know that your business complies will all laws and recommended guidelines. This not only improves trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required by most companies you engage with online.

For example:

Google requires your site to display certain information if using many of their services. This includes Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Earning revenue online with your site using Google AdSense online advertising …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

And even promoting your products via Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell digital products using merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established online merchant sites, you will be required to add various legal pages before they will approve your products for sale …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you include clear disclaimers and policies on your website, especially if you plan to sell products online with the aid of product testimonials or endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business 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 results in the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting 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 physically located in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by making sure that your site complies with FTC guidelines.

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

(Word your disclaimers and disclosures correctly to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Applications Also Require Compliance

If you plan to create apps that integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and many others with information about various legal pages …

(Apps for social networking sites also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether or not you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting services or products on your site via 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 need to display on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements - don’t risk 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.

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

Essential Legal Pages To Add To Your Site To Ensure Compliance

If your website is lacking in aspects of compliance, then you will find this section helpful.

At its most basic, adding the following legal pages to your website should help your business stay out of trouble with many regulatory agencies and external providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “takedown” notices):

• About Us Page
• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Disclaimers
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

In addition to the above pages, you may want to consider adding one or more of the pages listed below if applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you provide information about affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (if you allow users to download media on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

Adding the right disclosure information to your website is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Disclosure that informs readers that you will not receive compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets users know that you will derive some form of financial or similar form of benefit if they purchase through your affiliate links.
• Sample/Review Copy – Discloses to users that you have received a review or sample copy of the product by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Informs readers that you were compensated in some way to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your visitors 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.

How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Website

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

Uploading Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Website

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

We recommend adding a legals folder to your web server and uploading your legal pages to this directory using FTP …

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

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

(WordPress Menu)

After uploading your legal pages, make sure that these are kept up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can add these to the sidebar (or the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors have access to the information from all pages …

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

We have created a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar here:

• How To Add And Configure Widgets In The WordPress Sidebar

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

To learn more, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com

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

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Legal Form Templates)

These 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 details, then pasted into your legal web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service (ToS) & 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 page for each legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as previously described.

To learn more, go here:

• Scott Talbert’s Legal Page Templates

WordPress Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things really simple by using a plugin.

Here are some legal WordPress plugins you should check out:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WP Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress)

If you don’t want to bother with creating legal pages manually, then consider installing a plugin like WP Legal Pages …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a low-priced 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 time.

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

• Pre-written Templates – Includes over 20 built-in legal page templates created by 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 completely editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – WordPress content editor lets you edit all legal pages like any page on your site.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information will be automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. 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. When users agree to your terms, the page unlocks.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will be added to your dashboard section …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings)

With WPLegal Pages, you can easily create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites with products, affiliate/review sites, AdSense sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Create different legal page types)

Choose from several pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – 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

Go here to learn more this powerful plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

total website compliance and disclaimer solution …

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro)

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 And Conditions
• 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 have packaged high quality, professionally written legal disclaimers into a plugin that can be installed quickly on any WordPress site. You can have legal pages installed and set up on your site in one minute or less and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your online legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some form of basic legal protection on your site until you can afford professional assistance.

We want your business to be legally protected!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal documentation, or a legal pages plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator Software quickly generates basic 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 do any type of business online, you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) required by 3rd-party sites that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your website must comply with numerous regulations, many of which you may not even be aware of.

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 in this article. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.

Additional Information

Below is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your site may require to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:

• FTC Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• FTC Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program – Better Business Bureau
• 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
• United States Copyright Office

Additionally …

• 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

Hopefully, this article has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information provided above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your website.

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