How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

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

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

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their sites state that if you promote anything on your site for commercial gain, then you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory departments, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Search online “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The new laws has legal ramifications for various business activities, including:

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

If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list digital products, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will disapprove your applications, and you won’t be allowed to promote many advertising and affiliate marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements according to laws that govern business practices online, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering on your website, and that there are easy solutions that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the tools discussed further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice about your website or business. As stated earlier, this article is designed 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 online business practices and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you promote on your website or blog

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Are you at risk? Consider what would happen to your business if the situations below were to happen:

• A person has a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin care creams you sell as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users an allergic reaction.
• Your opt-in list displays a statement informing prospective subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not clearly informed them what you will do with the information you’ve collected.
• Someone steals your content and puts it up on their site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making your visitors aware that you are marketing a product as an affiliate that you could earn a sales commission if visitors purchase it.
• You don’t spell out the terms of your refund/return policies.
• A visitor claims that the testimonials on your site are misleading and decides to sue you because of it.
• You have not disclosed that you were given a free copy in a product review.
• Your site contains adult-related content and you haven’t taken sufficient measures to keep underaged children from accessing it.

Consider now these documented case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would have to give up personal information to complete an offer they were promoting. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he was also ordered to give everyone they do business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer copped a whopping $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private information.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many internet marketers took a risk and lost. Their accounts were shut down, resulting thousands of $$$ 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% were in breach of 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 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 with warnings or lose access to the Google program whose policies they had violated, 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 litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

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

it’s important to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant.

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

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

You are required to let your site visitors know that your website complies with legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and confidence in your site, it’s also a requirement of many companies you do business with.

For example:

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

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Earning revenue online with your WordPress blog using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense online advertising policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you plan to sell products online via companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add a number of legal pages to your site before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements for selling products through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policies to visitors, especially regarding the use of testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many business are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As documented on their website, this often prompts the FTC to make an example of businesses and prosecute companies for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

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

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

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

Social Media Applications - Don’t Forget These

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

(Apps that integrate with social networking sites like Facebook also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you are breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of organizations like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting products or services online using affiliate marketing, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for Amazon or eBay products, or use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your pages, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to provide on your site to comply with all Terms Of Service and policy requirements to avoid having your accounts terminated.
• If you’ve ever wondered if “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 third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use)

Basic Legal Pages You Should Add To Your Site

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

Adding the following legal pages to your website will help keep your business out of trouble with many consumer protection authorities and external providers, and avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

In addition to the above pages, you may want to look into including one or more of these compliance pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website or blog provides information about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Types Of Disclosure Pages

It’s important to add the right disclosure information to your site. For example:

• No Material Connection – Lets site users know that you will not receive compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your readers know that you may receive compensation if they act on your recommendation and buy through affiliate links on your site.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets your readers know that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Informs site users that you have been compensated in some form 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 show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually To Your Site

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

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

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

You can then easily add links 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 up-to-date and display clearly to all visitors. You can insert these into your sidebar (or the footer of your website) to ensure that visitors will be able to access the information from every page …

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

If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar, refer to this tutorial:

• Adding Widgets To The Sidebar Area

Ready-Made Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms)

More info:

• FindLegalForms.com – Legal forms

Another option is to purchase a package of cut & paste website legal templates created by legal attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

These templates were created by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be easily customized with search and replace to add your own business name and URL, then pasted into your pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates Federal Trade Commission regulations brought into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
• Terms of Service (ToS) & 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 these to your server as described earlier.

More information:

• Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

Plugins – Legal Pages

In addition to using copy & paste templates, another option for adding legal pages to your website is to use a plugin.

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress-powered sites that you may be interested in using:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

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

This is not a free plugin, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help make the work of creating and implementing legal pages on your site a lot easier and save you a great deal of time and effort.

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

• Pre-written Legal Templates – The plugin gives you access to 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 – The plugin includes customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any other WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to any of your website or blog 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 any page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. When a user agrees to your legal 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 be added to your navigation section …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress – Settings)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different types of sites, such as business websites, niche websites, medical sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages – Page Type)

You can also select from various pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages – 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

Visit this website to learn more about using this plugin:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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

More info:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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 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 less than one minute and the license allows you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites (even sites that you decide to sell).

For more information, visit this site:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

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

We want your business to be legally safe!

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

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

Legal Pages Generator lets you quickly generate necessary legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Statement, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you do business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any terms of service (TOS) and guidelines of 3rd-party products and services 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, we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Legal Information

Below is a useful list of additional sites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain 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
• 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
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• United States Copyright Office

See Also …

• 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
• 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 compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add essential legal pages to your site using simple solutions.

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