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 digital economy continues growing at an overwhelming speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to try and stay on top of what’s going on and make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if having a digital presence plays an important role in your business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites clearly state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for commercial gain, then you need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by consumer protection agencies, such as the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Do a search online for “The Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program,” which regulates behavioral advertising across the internet for more details.

(BBB – Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws affect various online business activities, including:

• Any form of advertising, e.g. text link advertising, Google Adsense, etc.
• Retarget Marketing
• Google Analytics (or other analytics software)
• Affiliate Marketers
• Product Creation
• Bloggers
• etc.

If your website does not display certain legal pages to visitors (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank or JVZoo will not let you list digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will reject your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a range of advertising and online marketing networks.

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

The purpose of this article is to make you aware that your website may be required to comply with legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business, the importance of being compliant with the terms of service of external providers whose products or services you may be selling online, and that there are plugins for WordPress users that can help your site become fully compliant, such as the tools that we discuss further below.

Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we do not provide legal advice about your website or business. As previously stated, the aim of this article is to help make you aware that your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern business online and that compliance may be required with the terms of service of providers whose services or products you advertise on your website or blog

Understanding The Importance Of Making Your Website Compliant

Is your business at risk? Consider what the implications to your business would be if the scenarios below were to occur:

• A person has a heart attack after they use your online fitness workout.
• The skin care products you sell as an affiliate marketer gives people an adverse reaction.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you haven’t informed them exactly what you’ll do with it.
• Someone copies content from your website and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your website or blog making your site users aware that you are an affiliate for the product you’re endorsing and may get paid a financial benefit if they purchase it.
• You have not spelled out the terms of your refund and return policies.
• Visitors claim that your testimonials are misleading and decide to sue you because of it.
• You haven’t disclosed that you have received a free copy of the product you reviewed.
• Your site includes adult-related content and you didn’t take sufficient measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider now the following documented 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 his offer. Cost = $390,000.
• A social networking app developer copped a massive $800,000 fine for collecting personal information without users’ knowledge and consent – including storing private information about children.
• 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, resulting thousands of $$$ in lost revenue.
• An independent study by Brad Geddes of SearchEngineLand, showed that, of a couple of hundred websites chosen at random, more than 90% were breaking at least one of Google’s policies, more than 65% were in breach of 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 cautions or lose access entirely to the Google program they had infringed, which could result in loss of income (e.g. AdSense or AdWords).

Can you see how easy it is to be exposed to the risk of litigation?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Promoter
• AdWords User
• Niche Marketer
• Amazon Affiliate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Consultant Or Coach
• Seller Of Any Product Or Service Online

You need to make sure that your website or blog complies with all laws and regulations governing the use of your site, wherever you are located.

Complying With Third-Party Companies Terms And Policies

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

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

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires your site to display legal information when using many of their services or features. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Making money online with your online properties using Google AdSense ads …

(Google AdSense ads policy requirements)

And even promoting your products through Google AdWords …

(Policy requirements for using Google AdWords)

If you sell products online through places such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will be required to add a number of legal pages to your website before they will approve your products for selling via their networks …

(ClickBank – policy requirements for vendors)

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

(Federal Trade Commission – consumer policies and regulations)

FTC Regulations – Ensure That Your Site Is Compliant

FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. A quick search online will easily reveal that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As documented on their website, this will most likely prompt 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 type of business online, therefore, it’s best not to take any chances. Even if your business does not operate in the U.S. it’s best to protect your business interests by ensuring that your site is compliant with FTC guidelines and regulations.

A number of sites provide guidelines and examples for structuring disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references at the end of this article …

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

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

If you plan to develop apps for your website users, sites like Twitter, Facebook, and others will require you to provide information about your legal pages …

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether you are 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 products or services online via affiliate marketing, or monetize your pages with Google AdSense, eBay or Amazon ads, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, etc., then find out exactly what kind of legal information you need to display 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 whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, then it’s best to take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies)

Common Legal Pages To Add To Your Website To Ensure Compliance

If your web site is falling short 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 agencies and third-party providers, and even help to avoid possible legal issues or even threats of legal action (e.g. “take down” notices):

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

As well as the pages above, you may want to look into adding any of the pages listed below where applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (e.g. if you promote or sell affiliate products or services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers (e.g. if your website provides content about health or medical areas)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you provide users with access to downloadable media on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Lets your visitors know that you will not receive compensation for writing the article.
• Affiliate Links – Lets readers be aware that you may benefit financially if they act on your recommendation and buy through your affiliate links.
• Sample Or review Copy – Lets visitors know that you have received a review or sample copy of the product or service you’re writing about.
• Sponsored Post – Informs visitors that you have been compensated in some way to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Informs users 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.

Adding Legal Pages Content To Your WordPress Website

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

Upload Legal Web Pages Manually

If someone prepares the legal content for you in typical web page format (e.g. HTML), you can simply upload these to your server, or have someone upload them for you.

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

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

You can then add links to these legal pages in WordPress using a custom WordPress menu …

(WordPress Menu)

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

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

We have written a detailed tutorial on displaying links to pages on your sidebar or footer using widgets here:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Website

Templates

You can find attorney-drafted disclosures and downloadable website forms and agreements by searching online, or going to sites like the ones listed below:

Find Legal Forms

(Find Legal Forms – Attorney-drafted legal forms)

More information:

• Find Legal Forms

Alternatively, you can purchase a set of cut & paste website legal templates designed by legal attorney Scott Talbert to help businesses protect themselves online …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Cut And Paste Website Legal Pages)

These legal templates 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 pages.

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance
• Privacy Policy: Google, etc.
• 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 page for every legal form you want added to your website, 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.

Go here for more details:

• Website Legal Pages

WordPress Legal Plugins

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

Here are some great plugins for WordPress users worth looking into:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin For WordPress

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin)

If manually setting up legal pages for your site seems too time-consuming for you, then consider installing WP Legal Pages instead …

The WP Legal Pages plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported premium plugin that will simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your site and save you a great deal of time and effort.

Here are just some of the benefits of using the WP Legal Pages:

• Pre-written Templates – Over 20 built-in legal page templates created by a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – Set up most of the basic legal pages you will need in a few minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.
• Customizable Pages – Includes fully customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. ToS, Disclaimer, Earnings Disclaimer, Privacy Policy and more!)
• Editable Pages – Content editor lets you edit legal pages like any WordPress page.
• Custom Shortcodes – You can add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your content when you publish.
• Exclude pages. The plugin lets you exclude pages from menus with a simple checkbox and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your terms.
• New Features – New plugin features get added when new versions are released.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a menu feature will be added to your main dashboard menu …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Settings Screen)

With WPLegal Pages, you can 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 menu)

Select from several pre-written legal templates …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Pre-configured 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 plugin:

• WP Legal Pages

Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin

The Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your website …

To learn more about the plugin go here:

• Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Legal Suite Pro

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 – 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 less than one minute and the plugin licensing is flexible, allowing you to install and use this plugin on all of your sites.

For more details, go here:

• Legal Suite Pro Plugin

If hiring legal experts to create your legal pages is out of your budget, consider implementing some basic form of legal protection on your site until you can afford a lawyer.

We want your website to be legally protected!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator tool below, or consider choosing one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using ready-made legal templates, 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 Policy, Copyright Notice, Website Disclaimer and Earnings Disclaimer.

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As stated earlier, if you engage in any form of business online, you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies and the terms of service (TOS) and guidelines for third-party products and services that you may decide to promote or advertise online. Your digital presence must comply with a whole range of regulations, many of which you may not be aware of.

Being non-compliant 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, 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 to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements pertaining to your business.

Additional Legal Information

Below is a time-saving list of websites we suggest you visit to help you better understand what your website may require to stay compliant and meet its legal requirements and guidelines:

• Federal Trade Commission 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 – 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
• United States Copyright Office

Also …

• 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 presented above to quickly add essential legal pages to your site.

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