Create a Privacy Policy in WordPress With TermsFeed AutoTerms

Answer a questionnaire and get a draft legal page in WordPress

Create a legal page with TermsFeed AutoTerms, the free WordPress plugin, in 5 steps and about 5 minutes for each questionnaire. The plugin writes the text in English from your answers, once, when you click Create, and saves the result as a draft. Visitors to your WordPress website see nothing until you read the draft and publish it.

The plugin offers 3 questionnaires, for a Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, and a Cookies Policy, and a custom legal page with no questionnaire. The generated text is a starting point. The questionnaire ends with a disclaimer that the agreements are for informational purposes only and are not legal advice.

Sign in to your WordPress admin before you start. You need an Administrator account or a role the plugin adds, which opens the TermsFeed menu. Keep the website name, the website address, and the business details at hand.

What to check in "General Settings" before you create a legal page

Check TermsFeed > Settings first, because the questionnaire takes its first answers from General Settings. The website name, the website URL, the company name, the company address, the country, and the state all come from there.

Clear Company name and Company address in General Settings for a site that no registered business runs, because both fields hold the WordPress Site Title by default. Fill in the fields with WordPress Legal Page Settings.

How to create a legal page from a questionnaire

Each questionnaire fits on a single screen, so you fill it in without paging through steps. Start from the Add Legal Page screen and finish with a draft in the editor.

1. Open TermsFeed > Add Legal Page. The screen shows 4 boxes: Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Cookies Policy, and Custom Legal Page. A number in parentheses after a title counts the legal pages whose slug starts with the slug of that type, such as privacy-policy, trashed pages excluded.
2. Click Create in the box for the page you need. The questionnaire opens below a box with a button that generates the latest version of the page on TermsFeed.com, so scroll past that box to the title of the page.
3. Answer the questions from the top: the website, the country, and the business first, then the questions of the page type, then the contact methods and the credit link option.
4. Click Create at the bottom of the questionnaire. The plugin writes the page and opens it in the editor as a draft.
5. Open TermsFeed > All Legal Pages to confirm the result. The new page shows the status draft and "N/A" in the Shortcode column until you publish it.

The footer legal links and the shortcodes leave out the draft until you publish it. Review and publish the draft with Edit and Publish WordPress Legal Pages.

The questions every questionnaire asks

All 3 questionnaires start with the same questions about the website, the country, and the business, and end with the same contact methods and credit link option. The questions of the page type sit in between.

• Website. Keep "What is your website URL?" and "What is your website name?" equal to General Settings, and the page stays linked to those settings. A blank answer links the page to the settings too, so clearing it does not keep the name or URL out of the page.
• Country. Pick "Your country" and "Your state", which the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Conditions name in English in their Country definition. The state question appears only for countries with states.
• Entity type. Choose "I'm a business" or "I'm an individual". The business choice shows the questions about the business name and address.
• Contact methods. Tick each way users reach you, by email, a page on your WordPress website, phone, or post, and fill in the detail each one asks for.
• Credit link. Select the "Yes! Show a small credit link note…" radio button under "Keep the plugin free?", or leave it unselected. The "Yes!" answer adds a short credit sentence with a link to the TermsFeed generator of that page type.

The questionnaire does not keep the answers after you click Create, so check each one first. Look up the exact wording, the prefilled values, and the text each answer adds, for all 3 questionnaires, in Privacy Policy Questionnaire Answers.

The questions specific to each legal page

Each answer to the questions of the page type decides which sections or list entries the page holds. Answer for your business as it runs today, then edit the page when the business changes.

The Privacy Policy questionnaire asks which personal information you collect and which analytics tools you use, from a list. It then asks, for 3 laws in turn, whether to add the wording of each law. The order is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), then the California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA). The CCPA wording covers the CCPA as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).

The Terms and Conditions questionnaire asks whether users create accounts, upload content, or buy goods, and whether your content and trademarks are your exclusive property. The Cookies Policy questionnaire asks whether the site shows a cookie notice, uses analytics tools, and uses social media log-ins or like buttons.

How to create a custom legal page

The Custom Legal Page box opens the classic WordPress editor, with no questionnaire. The box reads "Create your own custom legal page and manage it through TermsFeed AutoTerms."

1. Click Create in the Custom Legal Page box.
2. Write the title and the text, or paste a document you already have.
3. Click Publish.

A custom legal page behaves like a generated legal page once published: it appears in the footer legal links, takes the [wpautoterms] shortcodes, and gets an address under the legal pages slug. WordPress sets its slug from the title, as it does for any page. Change the slug with the Edit button next to the permalink under the title.

The slug each legal page receives

The plugin sets the slug of a generated page once, when you click Create, to the name of its type. The slug is the last part of the web address, so the Privacy Policy opens at /termsfeed/privacy-policy/ on your WordPress website by default.

Link each generated page at its default address.

A second page of the same type gets the same slug while it is a draft, and WordPress adds a number such as privacy-policy-2 when you publish it.

The shortcodes find a legal page by its slug, so a shortcode that names privacy-policy never reaches a page published as privacy-policy-2. [wpautoterms page_link="privacy-policy"] keeps pointing at the older page, or prints nothing once the older page is gone. Resolve a taken slug yourself before you publish: move the older page or draft to the Trash, or edit one of the slugs. Find every shortcode that names a slug in Legal Page Shortcodes for WordPress.