Learn what the plugin adds to your WordPress website
TermsFeed AutoTerms is a free WordPress plugin that writes a Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, or Cookies Policy from a questionnaire and adds 5 Compliance Kits to your WordPress website. The legal pages and the kits work independently, so you use a questionnaire without a consent banner, or a kit without a generated page. Everything runs inside WordPress, except the TermsFeed Free Cookie Consent 4.2.0 script, which the browser loads from TermsFeed. Install the plugin and publish a first Privacy Policy with the WordPress Privacy Policy Quickstart.
How the plugin creates legal pages from a questionnaire
The plugin offers 3 questionnaires, for a Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, and a Cookies Policy, plus a custom legal page that you write yourself in the editor. Each questionnaire starts from the website and company details in TermsFeed > Settings. It then asks the questions of its page type, such as the data your WordPress website collects for a Privacy Policy. Click the "Create" button, and the plugin writes the page text once, in English, whatever language your WordPress website uses.
The plugin saves the new page as a draft for you to review and publish. It does not keep a copy of your answers, and the questionnaire does not reopen, so you make later changes by editing the text. The website name and URL stay linked to TermsFeed > Settings when your answers equal those settings or are left blank, and a later change there reaches the page.
Legal pages are a content type of their own, separate from WordPress Pages, and the plugin lists them under TermsFeed > All Legal Pages. With pretty permalinks, a Privacy Policy has the address /termsfeed/privacy-policy/, and the archive of every legal page has the address /termsfeed/. Legal pages never appear in site search on your WordPress website. Create your first legal page with Create a Privacy Policy in WordPress.
The 5 Compliance Kits the plugin adds and what visitors see
The plugin adds 5 Compliance Kits, and only Links to Legal Pages is on after install. A compliance kit is a ready-made part of your WordPress website, such as a consent banner or a row of footer legal links. You turn each compliance kit on and configure it under TermsFeed > Compliance Kits. The "Enable" and "Disable" buttons save the change with no "Save Changes" click, and a page cache shows it once you clear the cache. The "Configure" button opens the kit settings.
Each compliance kit shows visitors a different element and starts on or off after install.
| Kit | What visitors see | After install |
|---|---|---|
| Cookie Consent | The consent banner of the Cookie Consent script, version 4.2.0, and its Preferences Center. With the default GDPR preference, the vendor scripts you add on its Vendor Scripts tab wait until the visitor accepts their category, except strictly-necessary ones. |
Off |
| Cookie Notice | A bar that says the site uses cookies, with a Close link. The bar does not hold back any script or record an answer. | Off |
| Links to Legal Pages | Links to every published legal page at the bottom of every page | On |
| Update Notices of Legal Pages | A bar that announces the legal pages you changed in the last 3 days, the default period | Off |
| Endorsements | An affiliate disclaimer before or after the content of a blog post, on the single view of the post | Off |
The TermsFeed admin menu
The plugin adds a TermsFeed menu to your WordPress admin, and every Administrator and Super Admin sees its Dashboard, All Legal Pages, Add Legal Page, and Help items. The plugin creates the "WPAutoTerms Pages Editor (additional)" role, and the "Editor + WPAutoTerms Pages Editor" role on sites that have the WordPress Editor role. The kits hold scripts, CSS, and HTML that print on every page of your WordPress website. A user with a plugin role sees Compliance Kits, Settings, and Legacy Auto TOS & PP only with unfiltered_html, the WordPress permission to add scripts and HTML.
Check which users see each item before you give someone a plugin role.
| Menu item | What it opens | Who sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | A welcome screen with cards that point to the main features and links to TermsFeed blog posts | Administrators, Super Admins, and users with a plugin role |
| All Legal Pages | The list of legal pages, with the Status, Shortcode, and Last Effective Date columns | Administrators, Super Admins, and users with a plugin role |
| Add Legal Page | The 3 questionnaires and the custom legal page | Administrators, Super Admins, and users with a plugin role |
| Compliance Kits | The 5 kits, each with the "Enable" or "Disable" button and the "Configure" button | Administrators, Super Admins, and users with a plugin role who hold unfiltered_html |
| Settings | The General Settings and Advanced Settings screens, on the General and Advanced tabs | Administrators, Super Admins, and users with a plugin role who hold unfiltered_html |
| Legacy Auto TOS & PP | The settings of the 3 shortcodes from Auto Terms of Service and Privacy Policy 1.x, only on sites upgraded from 1.x | Administrators, Super Admins, and users with a plugin role who hold unfiltered_html |
| Help | Common questions with their answers, and the "Send us a message" button | Administrators, Super Admins, and users with a plugin role |
The 3 Cookie Consent kit tabs and the Advanced tab have no menu item of their own. Open the tabs with the "Configure" button in the Cookie Consent box on the Compliance Kits screen, and open the Advanced tab at the top of Settings. Give an Editor access to legal pages with Edit and Publish WordPress Legal Pages.
What the plugin loads from TermsFeed
While the Cookie Consent kit is on, the plugin loads only the Cookie Consent script files from TermsFeed, in the browser, and the script sends TermsFeed the page hostname. The script comes from https://www.termsfeed.com/public/cookie-consent/4.2.0/cookie-consent.js and loads in the <head> of every page of your WordPress website, except wp-login.php and wp-register.php. The preview on the Customization tab loads the Cookie Consent script in your WordPress admin, with the kit on or off. Each vendor script loads from its vendor host once its category is allowed.
The plugin does not make requests from your server to TermsFeed or to any other server. It generates the legal page text inside WordPress, does not run scheduled (cron) events, and does not send emails. The "Send us a message" button on the Help screen shows the site information to copy and a link that opens an email to TermsFeed in your own email program. The plugin sends nothing itself.
A closed Cookie Notice stays closed, and a closed Update Notices bar stays closed until the page changes again or 7 days pass. Each notice stores the dismissal in a cookie. The Cookie Consent script stores each answer from a visitor in 3 consent cookies of its own. Look up the names of the cookies the notice kits write in Cookies the notice kits write.
Check the requests on your own WordPress website. Open Chrome DevTools, select the Network tab, type termsfeed.com in the filter, and reload the page. With the Cookie Consent kit on, the list holds the 2 Cookie Consent script files under /public/cookie-consent/4.2.0/ and the ping under /public-ping/cookie-consent/4.2.0/. With the kit off, the list stays empty once you clear your page cache.
What the plugin does not do
The plugin does not translate legal pages, update them when the law changes, detect visitor location, or record consent. Plan for each gap before you rely on the plugin.
| Capability | The plugin | Where TermsFeed covers it |
|---|---|---|
| Generate a Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, or Cookies Policy from a questionnaire | Yes | |
| Generate a Return Policy, Disclaimer, or End User License Agreement (EULA) | No | Generate them with the Return and Refund Policy Generator, the Disclaimer Generator, and the EULA Generator in the TermsFeed app |
| Write a legal page in a language other than English | No | |
| Update a legal page when the law changes | No | Generate a policy in the TermsFeed app, such as with the Privacy Policy Generator, to get notified when it is time to update it |
| Hold back optional vendor scripts until the visitor accepts their category, under the default GDPR preference | Yes, with the Cookie Consent kit | |
| Show the consent banner by visitor location (geolocation) | No | Show the consent banner by location with TermsFeed Privacy Consent |
| Record each consent choice in a consent log | No | Record every choice with the Privacy Consent consent log |
| Scan your WordPress website for cookies | No | |
| Produce an IAB Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) string | No | |
| Add blocks or block patterns to the block editor | No | |
| Offer a REST API route | No | |
| Add the Endorsements disclaimer to pages or custom post types | No |
The Cookie Consent kit carries the limits of the Cookie Consent script it loads. Check those limits before you choose the kit, with Limits of Free Cookie Consent: What It Does Not Do.