How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

One of the worst situations a business owner can find themselves in is to break the law.

As the internet continues growing at such a rapid pace and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important that you try to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if having an online presence is important in the success of your overall business strategy.

New laws introduced in 2014 regulating how businesses promote advertising on their websites state that if you plan to promote anything on your website for material gain, you will need to follow certain disclosure guidelines to prevent enforceable orders being issued against you by regulatory agencies, 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.

(Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program)

These laws has consequences for several business categories, including:

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

If your website does not display certain legal pages (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, online merchants like ClickBank or JVZoo won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could suspend your account, Facebook could disapprove web applications, and you will not be allowed to promote a number of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.

If your website is not in compliance, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

The purpose of this article is to help make you aware that your site(s) may be required to comply with various legalities according to laws that govern online businesses, the importance of complying with the terms of service of 3rd-party providers whose services or products you may be using online, and that there are solutions that can help your websites become compliant, such as the tools that we list further below.

Is Your Site Breaking Rules Or Regulations?

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not providing legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and we recommend consulting legal experts about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all laws wherever you do business.

Why Making Your Website Compliant Is Important

Consider for a minute what could happen to your business if the following scenarios were to take place:

• A customer suffers a heart attack after purchasing your online fitness workout.
• The skin cream you promote as an affiliate marketer gives a number of users allergic reactions.
• You’ve let your subscribers know that you won’t sell their information, but you have not spelled out exactly what you will do with the information you’ve collected.
• Someone steals content from your site and puts it up on their own website.
• There is no statement on your site making your visitors aware that you are endorsing a product as an affiliate and may earn an affiliate commission if visitors decide to buy using your link.
• You did not spell out the conditions of your refund/return policies.
• Visitors claim that the testimonials on your site are fake and decide to sue you because of it.
• You did not disclose that you have received a free copy in your product review.
• Your site contains adult-related content and you didn’t take appropriate measures to restrict access by underaged persons.

Consider also these actual case studies of costly compliance breaches:

• A CPA Marketer failed to provide adequate disclaimers telling online users they would be required to give up personal information (including credit card info to complete a debt reduction offer. In addition to a hefty $390,000 fine, he is now required to give everyone he does business with for the next 20 years, a copy of the judgement — including employees.
• 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 children’s private details.
• Facebook’s Terms Of Service prohibits using software that scrapes UIDs. 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 picked at random, more than 90% had broken 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% had broken 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 cautions or lose access to the Google program whose policies with the violation, 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 through non-compliance?

Regardless of whether you are a:

• PPA (Pay Per Action) Marketer
• Multilevel Marketer
• Affiliate Product Marketer
• AdWords Advertiser
• Info Product Publisher
• Amazon Associate
• EBay Seller
• Adult Content Publisher
• Freelancer, Coach or Consultant
• Online Seller Of Any Service Or Product

it’s important to ensure that your online business stays fully compliant with the law.

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

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

You are expected to let your site users know that your website complies with all necessary legal requirements and professional guidelines. This not only increases trust and buyer confidence in your business, it’s also required in many cases by most companies you engage with online.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Google requires you to display legal information when using their products or service. This includes Google Analytics …

(Google Analytics – Policy Requirements)

Generating revenue with your blogs with Google AdSense display advertising …

(Google AdSense ads - policy requirements)

Or promoting your services using Google AdWords …

(Google AdWords – Policy Requirements)

If you sell digital products through merchants such as ClickBank, JVZoo, or other established merchant sites, you will need to add certain legal pages to your site before they will approve your products for selling via their networks …

(Policy requirements for ClickBank digital product vendors)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also requires you to include clear disclaimers and policy statements to visitors, especially when using testimonials or product endorsements …

(FTC – consumer guidelines and regulations)

New FTC Regulations Require Your Site To Be Compliant

New FTC regulations governing the conduct of doing business online were introduced in March 2012. Search online and you will see that many websites are unaware (or choose to ignore) these requirements. As has already been the case, this often ends up with 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 do any type 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 by making sure that your website is compliant with FTC guidelines.

A number of sites provide guidelines on how to structure disclaimers and disclosures to help your business comply with FTC requirements. We provide additional references and links to useful resources to some of these at the end of this article …

(Wording your disclaimers and disclosures correctly is important to avoid running foul of the law)

Social Media Apps Also Have Compliance Requirements

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

(Facebook apps also require compliance)

• If you are not sure whether or not 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 on your site as an affiliate marketer, or make money online with Google AdSense, Amazon, or eBay ads, or driving visitors to your site using Google AdWords, 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 shut down.
• If you have ever wondered whether “borrowing” a Copyright Notice is Copyright infringement, take proper precautions to protect yourself and your website.

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

What Legal Pages Do You Need To Add To Your Site To Be Safe From Legal Compliance Issues?

If you suspect that your web site lacks in terms of compliance, then this section will help you.

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

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

Additionally, you may want to look into implementing one or more of these pages if applicable:

• Affiliate Disclosure (if you sell or promote affiliate products and services)
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers (if your website provides information about financial areas or money-making opportunities)
• Refund Policy (if you sell products or services online)
• Media Terms Of Use (e.g. if you allow media downloads on your site)

Disclosure Pages – Types

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

• No Material Connection – Discloses to readers that you will not receive any kind of compensation for writing the post.
• Affiliate Links – Lets your visitors be aware that you may receive compensation if they purchase through one of your affiliate links.
• Sample/Review Copy – Lets visitors know that you have been given a sample or review copy of the product or service you’re reviewing or writing about by the author or product developer.
• Sponsored Post – Lets visitors be aware that you were compensated in some form to write the article.
• Third Party Advertising – Lets users know 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 display prominently on their sites since January 1, 2014.

How To Add Legal Pages Content To Your Site

Ideally, you will consult a lawyer and ask them to prepare the verbiage of your legal documents. Once these have been done, there are several ways to include them in your website.

Upload Legal Pages Manually

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

We recommend adding a legal directory to your server and uploading your legal pages to this directory via FTP …

(Upload legal pages to your server via FTP)

You can then add links to these 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 clearly accessible to all site visitors. You can insert links to your legal pages into the sidebar menu (or place them in the footer section of your site) so that visitors have access to legal information from every page …

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

If you need help adding links to pages on your sidebar menu or footer in WordPress using widgets, see this step-by-step tutorial:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar Section

Legal Templates

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

Find Legal Forms

(FindLegalForms.com)

For more information, go here:

• FindLegalForms.com – Attorney-prepared legal forms

Another option is to purchase a package of cut and paste legal templates drafted by attorney Scott Talbert …

Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages

(Website Legal Pages)

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

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

• Anti-Spam Policy
• Copyright Notice
• Disclaimer (multi-discipline professional disclaimers)
• DMCA Compliance
• FTC Compliance (This proprietary FTC page accommodates new Federal Trade Commission guidelines brought into effect in 2012)
• Privacy Policy: Google, DART, etc.
• Terms of Service (ToS) & Conditions of Use.

You can either create a new page on your website for every legal form you want to add to your site, then paste the content from the templates into your web pages and publish or upload your legal pages to your server as described earlier.

To learn more, go here:

• Cut & Paste Website Legal Pages – Website Legal Pages

Legal Pages – WordPress Plugins

In addition to using cut & paste legal templates, you can keep things very simple using plugins.

Here are some great WordPress plugins you may be interested in using:

WordPress Legal Pages Plugin

(WordPress Plugin – WordPress Legal Pages)

If you don’t want to spend time creating legal web pages manually, then consider using WP Legal Pages instead …

This plugin is not free, but it’s a very low-priced and well-supported plugin that will help simplify the job of creating and implementing legal pages on your website 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 a team of professional lawyers.
• Quick And Easy To Use – You can set up most of your basic legal pages in around 3 minutes with just a few mouse clicks.
• Customizable Pages – The plugin includes customizable and easy to edit legal form templates (e.g. Terms of Use, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy, Earnings Disclaimer and more!)
• Editable Pages – Full WYSIWYG editor lets you edit all legal pages like any other WP page.
• Custom Shortcodes – Add shortcodes to your WordPress pages and the information is then automatically inserted into your pages when you publish.
• Exclude pages. Exclude pages from menus with a simple check box and delete and manage these like any other page on your website.
• Forced Options – Force page or post lockdown. Page unlocks and can be accessed only when the user agrees to your terms.
• New Features – More features are being added to this plugin with each new version.

When you install WordPress Legal Pages, a new menu item will appear inside your main WordPress dashboard menu …

(WP Legal Pages Plugin – Menu)

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

(WordPress Legal Pages – Settings Screen)

The plugin gives you the option to create legal pages for different online uses, such as business websites, affiliate websites, Amazon sites, etc …

(WordPress Legal Pages Plugin – Create different legal pages)

You can also choose from various 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

To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit this site:

• WordPress Legal Pages

Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin

Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress sites with over twenty customizable compliance pages for your online presence …

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

• Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Legal Suite Pro Plugin

(Legal Suite Pro Plugin)

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 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 powered site. Your legal pages can be 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 the plugin on all of your websites (even sites that you decide to sell).

Go here for more information:

• Legal Suite Pro

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

We want your website to be safe!

Download the FREE Legal Pages Generator software below, or choose one of the better solutions we discuss in this article, such as using attorney-prepared legal forms, or a WordPress plugin - see section below.

(Legal Pages Generator Software)

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

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As we’ve previously pointed out, if you do business online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies and any guidelines and terms of service of 3rd-party sites that you may decide to promote or use online. Your digital presence must comply with a number 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 provide no legal advice here. We strongly advise you to do your own due diligence and consult legal experts to ensure that your website is compliant with the law concerning your specific business.

Legal 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 comply and meet 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
• 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

Also …

• Google 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 the importance of having a legally compliant website. Use the information above to quickly and easily add essential legal pages to your WordPress website using simple and inexpensive methods and solutions.

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