Fill in the General tab of TermsFeed > Settings before you create a legal page, because every TermsFeed AutoTerms questionnaire starts from those values. The General tab holds the website and company details, the slug in the address of every legal page, and the Pages widget option. The Advanced tab holds a single setting, Caching plugins compatibility mode.

The plugin shows the Settings item to Administrators, and to users with a plugin role who hold the WordPress unfiltered_html capability. Check who sees each screen with TermsFeed AutoTerms Capabilities and Roles.

General tab fields, defaults, and shortcodes

The General tab shows 8 fields in this order, and 6 of them print through a shortcode shown under the field. The plugin fills the first 4 fields from the WordPress settings on the first admin screen after activation, so check each value rather than trusting the default.

Field Default Shortcode Effect
Website name The Site Title from Settings > General [wpautoterms site_name] The website name the questionnaires suggest and the shortcode prints
Website URL The WordPress Address (URL) from Settings > General [wpautoterms site_url] The website address the questionnaires suggest and the shortcode prints
Company name The Site Title [wpautoterms company_name] The business name the questionnaires suggest and the shortcode prints
Company address The Site Title [wpautoterms company_address] The business address the questionnaires suggest and the shortcode prints
Country None, the select shows "Select a country" [wpautoterms country] The country the questionnaires suggest, which the shortcode prints by its English name
State None [wpautoterms state] The state the questionnaires suggest, in a row that appears only for a country with states
Legal pages slug termsfeed None The first segment of every legal page address
Show legal pages in Pages Widget Off None Adds legal pages to the classic WordPress Pages widget

The Country list holds 249 countries, with names in the language of your WordPress website. Insert any of the 6 shortcodes into a legal page, a post, or the message of the Cookie Notice, Update Notices, or Endorsements kit. Copy the full list from Legal Page Shortcodes for WordPress.

The General tab of TermsFeed Settings with the 8 fields, the Shortcode line under the first 6, and the Save Changes button marked

How to fill in the General Settings

Fill in the General tab in 5 steps and about 5 minutes. Have the legal name and postal address of the business at hand, or know that no registered business runs the site.

  1. Open TermsFeed > Settings. The General tab opens first.
  2. Check "Website name" and "Website URL", and correct them where the public name or the address of your WordPress website differs from the value shown.
  3. Replace the default in "Company name" and "Company address" with the legal name and the full postal address of the business, or clear both fields.
  4. Choose the "Country" of the business, and the "State" where the State row appears.
  5. Click the "Save Changes" button.

Check the result on the Add Legal Page screen. Open TermsFeed > Add Legal Page and click the "Create" button in the Privacy Policy box. The first questions show your website name, URL, country, and state. Check that the questionnaire selects "I'm a business" or "I'm an individual" as your Company fields call for. Leave the questionnaire without clicking the "Create" button at the end, and the plugin does not write the page.

Clear the company fields for a site that no registered business runs

Clear "Company name" and "Company address" when no registered entity runs your WordPress website.

The questionnaire selects the "I'm a business" option only while General Settings holds a company name or address that differs from the Site Title and the website name. Cleared fields and the default values both leave the "I'm an individual" option selected. A page for an individual defines the Company as the individual who owns and operates the website, with no company name or address.

"Website URL" accepts only http and https addresses

The "Website URL" field keeps only an address that starts with http:// or https://. The plugin adds http:// to an address typed without a scheme, so type https:// in full for a site served over HTTPS. An address with any other scheme leaves the field empty after the save. The [wpautoterms site_url] shortcode prints the same address.

Changes in General Settings reach a legal page only through shortcodes, so the website name and URL update where your answers equaled the settings or were blank. For those answers, the questionnaire wrote the website name and URL as [wpautoterms site_name] and [wpautoterms site_url].

The company name, company address, country, and state from your answers are plain text in the page. Edit that text in the legal page editor after a change, or create a new legal page from the questionnaire. Every shortcode you add to a page yourself, such as [wpautoterms company_name], follows General Settings too. Change the text of a page with Edit and Publish WordPress Legal Pages.

Change the first segment of every legal page address, termsfeed by default, in the "Legal pages slug" field. A new slug moves every legal page to a new address. With plain permalinks, the "Legal pages slug" field shows "Your Permalinks structure is set to plain. For this option to work, you need to change your Permalinks structure to post name." The change takes 4 steps and about 5 minutes.

  1. Open Settings > Permalinks. The slug works only with pretty permalinks, and a change to "Post name" gives every post and page a new address. Where the Permalink structure is "Plain", select "Post name" and click the "Save Changes" button.
  2. Open TermsFeed > Settings and type the new slug in "Legal pages slug", such as legal.
  3. Click the "Save Changes" button.
  4. Open a legal page at its new address, such as /legal/privacy-policy/, to confirm the change.

The plugin turns the value into a slug with lower-case letters, digits, and hyphens, so "Legal Pages" becomes legal-pages. The new addresses work from the next admin screen, which is the screen WordPress shows after the save. A value that leaves nothing, such as a row of punctuation, keeps the old slug. The plugin then shows an error that names the kept slug, such as "Invalid slug value, set to termsfeed."

The old addresses stop working after the change, and the plugin does not add redirects from them. The footer legal links that the Links to Legal Pages kit prints and the [wpautoterms page_link] shortcode follow the new slug once you clear your page cache. Update every link you typed by hand on your WordPress website, such as a Custom Link in a menu or a link in a post. Fix an old address that returns an error with Legal Page Returns 404 in WordPress.

Add your published legal pages to the classic Pages widget, where they follow your regular pages. The option is off by default.

  1. Tick "Show legal pages in Pages Widget" on the General tab.
  2. Click the "Save Changes" button.
  3. Clear your page cache, load a page that shows the classic Pages widget, and confirm that it lists your published legal pages after your regular pages.

The option affects only the classic Pages widget, and the Page List block of the block editor does not show legal pages.

The plugin adds its own Legal Pages widget, with a title, a sort order, and a list of pages to exclude. Choose between the 2 widgets, or add legal pages to a menu, with Add Legal Pages to WordPress Menus.

Caching plugins compatibility mode on the Advanced tab

Turn on "Caching plugins compatibility mode" only when the Cookie Notice or Update Notices bar fails to appear on the pages a caching plugin serves on your WordPress website. The setting is off by default, and it sits on the Advanced tab at the top of TermsFeed > Settings.

Some caching plugins store pages without the top bars, which the AutoTerms plugin normally inserts right after <body>. Compatibility mode prints the bars in the page footer, and a top bar still shows at the top of the page in the browser.

The Advanced tab shows "Unsupported caching plugins detected. We recommend enabling this option." in bold once the AutoTerms plugin finds that your caching plugin serves pages without those bars. WP Super Cache and Cache Enabler store the pages with the bars, so they never raise the hint. The AutoTerms plugin checks again whenever you activate a plugin from the WordPress admin.

Clear the cache of your caching plugin after you turn the mode on or off, as the help text "Clean/delete cache after enabling or disabling this option." asks. Find which kits a page cache affects, and what to exclude in page speed plugins, in WordPress Caching Plugins.

The Advanced tab of TermsFeed Settings with Caching plugins compatibility mode and the bold Unsupported caching plugins detected hint marked

What the plugin settings screens do not hold

The 2 settings tabs do not hold kit messages, colors, scripts, or legal page text. Open each compliance kit from TermsFeed > Compliance Kits, where the "Configure" button opens its settings. The "Configure" button of the Cookie Consent kit opens its Customization, Vendor Scripts, and Configuration Parameters tabs. Edit the text of a legal page in the legal page editor, from TermsFeed > All Legal Pages. Turn on a kit and change its colors and messages with WordPress Compliance Kits.