How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

If you plan to grow a successful business online, the last thing you want to do is to find out the hard way that you have been breaking any laws, rules or regulations.

Online laws are designed to protect the rights of consumers and apply to any person who sells, markets or promotes goods or services online. Anyone who owns a website risks being sued for not following compliance laws. Feigning ignorance about the law will not excuse you from being slapped with a legal notice.

Recent laws introduced in 2014 that regulate how businesses promote advertising on their sites clearly state that if you promote anything on your website for material gain, you must follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection departments, such as the US-based BBB, or Better Business Bureau. Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

The introduction of these new laws has legal ramifications for various online business activities, including:

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

If your site does not display certain pages to visitors (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could reject your applications, and you won’t be allowed to enrol in many advertising and online merchant networks.

If you are not in compliance, you could also end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

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

Is Your Site Breaking The Law?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice about your website or business. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws and regulations wherever you do business.

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider for one moment what the implications to your business would be in the following scenarios:

• A person has a cardiac arrest after using your online fitness program.
• The skin care lotion you promote as an affiliate gives someone an allergic reaction.
• Your opt-in list provides a statement informing subscribers that you will not sell their information, but you have not described exactly what you will do with their personal details.
• Someone copies your content and puts it up on their site.
• There is no statement on your site making your site visitors aware that you are promoting a product as an affiliate and may earn a commission if they purchase it.
• You didn’t spell out the terms and conditions of your return policies.
• Visitors claim that your testimonials are misleading and try to sue you because of it.
• You have not disclosed that you have received a free copy in a product review.
• Your website contains adult content and you did not take appropriate measures to keep underage persons from accessing it.

Consider also the documented examples 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 info to complete his offer. 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 private details about children.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits users from scraping UIDs. Many 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 in violation of at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were breaking at least two of Google’s policies, and more than 40% were breaking 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 with the violation, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how a website owner can easily become exposed to the risks of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• CPA or PPA Marketer
• Network Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdSense Publisher
• Info Product Marketer
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Publisher Of Adult Content
• Provider Of Freelance, Consulting Or Coaching Services
• Online Seller Of Any Product Or Service

You need to do whatever is necessary to make sure that your website complies with all laws governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With 3rd-Party Services Terms And Policies

Compliance with third-party services terms and policies is important.

You must let your site visitors know that your website complies with all necessary laws and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and confidence in your site, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you engage with online.

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 online with your WordPress site with Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense advertising - policy requirements)

And even promoting your services or products through Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell information products via places like ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant networks, you will need to add certain legal pages to your website before your products can be approved for sale …

(Policy requirements product vendors selling through ClickBank)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to display clear disclaimers and disclosures on your website, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Website Is Compliant

New FTC regulations governing how business is conducted online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online reveals that many websites are still 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 website owners for breaches of regulation in an effort to get other businesses to comply.

If you plan to do any kind 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. we strongly recommend protecting your business interests by making sure that your website complies with all FTC guidelines and regulations.

Many online resources provide guidelines for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business meet FTC requirements. We provide references and links to additional resources to a number of these at the end of this article …

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

Don’t Forget Social Media Applications

If you are planning to create apps that integrate with your site, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide access to various legal pages …

(Apps that interface with social networking sites also require compliance)

• If you are unsure whether or not you may be breaking the law, and/or Terms of Service policies and guidelines of companies like Google, Facebook, etc., it’s best to assume that you most probably are.
• If you plan to promote anything online as an affiliate marketer, or monetizing your pages with Google AdSense, ads for eBay or Amazon products, or driving visitors to your site 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 - don’t risk having your accounts suspended.
• If you have been wondering if “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 third-party websites require you to comply with their policies)

Basic Legal Pages To Include In Your Website

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

At its most basic, adding the following compliance pages to your website should help keep your business out of trouble with most consumer protection authorities and external providers, and help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “cease and desist” notices):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to look into including one or more of the pages listed below:

• Affiliate Agreement (if you sell products or services through an affiliate program)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides general advice about financial areas or income opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you run an e-commerce site)
• Audio/Video Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow users to download media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

It’s important to add the correct types of disclosure pages to your site. For example:

• No Material Connection – This lets users be aware that you will not receive for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Informs visitors that you may be compensated if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate link.
• Sample/Review Copy – Disclosure that informs your visitors that you have received a sample or review copy of the product.
• Sponsored Post – Disclosure that informs site users that you have been compensated in some form to write the post.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs your 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 Content To Your Website

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

Upload Legal Pages To Your Site

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

We recommend creating a legals folder in your server and uploading HTML pages containing your legal documentation to this folder using FTP …

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

You can then add links to these 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 your visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or the footer of your website or blog) to ensure that users have access to legal information from all of your pages …

(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 Add And Configure WordPress Widgets On Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Area

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms)

Go here to learn more:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can download a set of legal templates written by attorney Scott Talbert to protect businesses online …

Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages

(Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Templates)

Cut & Paste website legal pages were written by an attorney and feature less passive voice and more plain language phrasing and can be customized with a simple quick search and replace to add your own details, then pasted into your legal pages.

The legal templates included in Scott Talbert’s Website Legal Form Templates include:

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer: multi-discipline professional disclaimers
• DMCA Compliance
• Federal Trade Commission Compliance
• Privacy Policy
• ToS & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page for each legal form you want added to your website, then paste the content from the templates into your pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as previously described.

Visit this website for more details:

• Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – Plugins

In addition to using legal templates, you can keep things very simple using WordPress plugins.

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

WordPress Legal Pages

(WordPress Plugin – WP Legal Pages)

If the idea of manually creating legal pages for your site feels too time-consuming for you, then consider choosing a plugin like WordPress Legal Pages …

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 site much easier and save you time.

Some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages are:

• Built-in Templates – The plugin gives you access to over 20 built-in legal page templates created by professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with a few mouse clicks.
• Fully Customizable Pages – The plugin includes fully customizable and easily editable legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages just like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes Integration – You can add shortcodes to your website or blog pages and the information will then be automatically inserted into your content when published.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like every other WP page.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your terms.
• Additional Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

After installing WordPress Legal Pages, a menu item will display inside your main WP dashboard area …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Area)

The plugin gives you the option of creating legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate/review websites, e-commerce sites, etc …

(WP Legal Pages – Page Type)

Choose from a number of pre-configured 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

For more information about this handy plugin, go here:

• WP Legal Pages Plugin

Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable legal pages for your web presence …

Learn We have written a detailed review of this plugin here:

• Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(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 & 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 powered 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 the plugin on all of your sites.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro

If hiring a lawyer to create your legal documentation is out of your budget, consider implementing at least some basic type of legal protection on your website until you can afford professional legal services.

We want your site to be legally safe!

Download the Legal Pages Generator tool below (it’s FREE!), or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using legal templates, or a plugin as described in the section below.

(Legal Pages Generator)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you are making money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done and any guidelines and terms of service (TOS) provided by third-party sites that you may be promoting or using online. Your digital presence must comply with various regulations, many of which you may not 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 are not offering legal advice. You are strongly advised to do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.

Resources

Below is a time-saving list of additional sites we suggest you visit to better understand what may be required of your site to stay compliant and meet legal obligations:

• Federal Trade Commission Latest List Of Rules & Regulations
• Federal Trade Commission Advertising & Marketing Rules Of the Road
• FTC Advertising And Marketing On The Internet
• Better Business Bureau – 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 …

• 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

We hope you have found this article useful and that it has helped you understand the importance of having a compliant website. Use the information above to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog using simple and inexpensive methods and solutions.

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