How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

If you do any kind of business online, the last thing you want is to find yourself breaking any laws, rules or regulations.

Internet laws were designed to protect consumers and apply to any person who markets, sells or promotes products and services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law won’t protect you from being slapped with a legal notice.

New laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for profit, you must follow certain principles of disclosure to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, 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 legal ramifications for several business categories, including:

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

If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account, Facebook could reject your web applications, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or online merchant networks.

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

In this article, we look at the importance of having a compliant website and provide inexpensive ways that will help make your WordPress site compliant.

Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?

Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we do not offer legal advice on this website. As stated previously, the purpose 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 the laws and regulations governing business online and that you may be required to comply with the terms of service of providers whose products or services you offer on your website or blog

The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Consider for one minute what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• A person suffers a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate gives someone who purchases from your link allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you will not sell their information, but you haven’t described exactly what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone copies your content and publishes it on their site.
• There is no statement on your website or blog letting your site users know that you are marketing a product as an affiliate and could earn a commission if visitors purchase products via your affiliate link.
• You have not spelled out the terms and conditions of your refund policies.
• Someone claims that your testimonials are false and tries to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed that you were given a free copy of the product you reviewed.
• Your site includes adult content and you have not taken sufficient measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider now the actual case studies of costly compliance breaches listed below:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling visitors they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card details to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a substantial $390,000 fine, they’ve also been ordered to provide everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• A social networking app developer received a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service does not allow users to scrape Users IDs. Many marketers gambled that they could get away with it and lost. Their accounts were shut down, costing them thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
• An independently-conducted study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred randomly-picked websites, more than 90% were in breach 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 entirely 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 you could easily become exposed to the risk of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA, CPC or PPA Marketer
• MLM Networker
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords User
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Coaching Or Consulting Services
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

It’s imperative to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website or blog stays legally compliant.

Complying With 3rd-Party Companies - ToS, Policies, etc.

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

You must let your site visitors know that your website complies will all laws and professional guidelines. This not only improves consumer trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also a requirement of most companies you will interact with.

Here are just some examples:

Google requires you to display legal information if using their services. This includes using Google Analytics …

(Policy requirements for using Google Analytics)

Making money online with your websites with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense - policy requirements)

Or promoting your site through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you plan to sell digital products through companies like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for sale in their marketplace …

(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires that you display clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially if you plan to sell or promote products or services online using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Comply

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of businesses online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will reveal that many sites are still unaware (or choose to flaunt) these requirements. As has happened in the past, this typically ends up with the FTC making an example of businesses and prosecuting companies in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. we strongly recommend protecting your business by ensuring that your site is compliant with all FTC guidelines.

Various online business resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. See the references and useful 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)

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you plan to create applications that will integrate with your website, you will also be required to provide sites like Facebook, Twitter, and others with information about 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 websites like Google, Facebook, etc., then it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you are considering promoting anything online as an affiliate marketer, or generate revenue with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, 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’ve been wondering whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

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

Essential Legal Pages You Should Include In Your Site To Ensure Compliance

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

Adding the following legal pages to your site will help your site stay out of trouble with many regulatory authorities and third-party service providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

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

• Affiliate Agreement (e.g. if you provide an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides money-making information)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Media Terms Of Use (if you provide users with access to videos or audio files on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

Adding the right type of disclosure to your site is important. For example:

• No Material Connection – Discloses to readers that you are not receiving any form of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you may benefit financially if they purchase through affiliate links on your site.
• Review Or Sample Copy – Lets readers be aware that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service.
• Sponsored Post – Discloses to users that you have been compensated in some form to write the content.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs 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 online publishers to show prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Compliance Pages To Your Website

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal verbiage for you in HTML format, you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

We recommend creating a legals folder in your web server and uploading your legal pages to this folder via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server using FTP)

You can then easily add a link to your pages from your WordPress site using custom links in your menu admin area …

(WordPress Menu)

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

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

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

• Adding And Configuring Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar

Templates

You can find downloadable attorney-prepared internet forms and agreements just by searching online, or by going to sites like the ones shown below:

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

For more information, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms

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

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages – Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website templates were written by an attorney and 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 web pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance (This proprietary FTC page reflects FTC guidelines that came into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, DoubleClick DART, etc.
• Terms of Service & 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 on your website for every legal form you want added to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload the pages to your web server as described previously.

More information:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Plugins

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

Here are some legal plugins for WordPress sites worth looking into:

WP Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

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

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

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

• Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Very Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you need in a few minutes with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms Of Service, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – WYSIWYG editor lets you edit legal pages just like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – Add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information is then 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 WordPress page.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lock down. When the user agrees to your legal terms, the page unlocks, giving them access.
• Additional Features – More features get added to this plugin with each new version.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu feature will appear inside your navigation menu …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Legal Pages Menu)

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

(WP Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different types of websites, such as business websites with products, niche sites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Page Type)

Select from several pre-configured legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Built-In 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 about the benefits of using this plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …

For an in-depth article about this plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro For WordPress)

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 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 plugin licensing is very flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your websites.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring lawyers to create your legal documentation is currently out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford a solicitor.

We want your website to be protected!

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

(Legal Pages Generator)

Legal Pages Generator quickly generates essential legal documents for your website including Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and optional Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies and the guidelines and terms of service (TOS) of third-party services and products that you may be promoting or recommending online. Your website or blog must comply with numerous regulations, some 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 provide no legal advice on this website. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law regarding your specific business.

References And Resources

Here is a time-saving list of websites we recommend you visit to better understand what your business requires to remain compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• FTC 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
• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• US Copyright Office

Additionally …

• 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
• Google AdWords Help – What to include in your privacy policy for remarketing
• ClickBank – Creating Your First Product
• Facebook Platform Policies

We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information presented above to quickly add legal pages to your website using simple resources and plugins.

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