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Privacy Policy Plugin For WordPress

At the end of February, 2008, Google started requiring AdSense publishers to display a privacy policy on all sites that displayed AdSense ads or search boxes. Since many WordPress blogs are monetized with AdSense, I decided to write a plugin that would automate the creation of AdSense-compliant privacy policies for WordPress users. Thus the Privacy Policy Plugin for WordPress was born.

Requirements

Self-hosted WordPress 2.0 or higher. You don’t actually need to be displaying AdSense ads, the privacy policy is generic enough to be used with most sites. If you collect any kind of personal information via a squeeze page, however, you’ll have to wait for an update to the plugin to handle those situations.

Installation

Installation is simple, as with most WordPress plugins. Download the privacy-policy-1.0.zip file and extract its contents into your blog’s wp-content/plugins folder. This will create a new privacy-policy subfolder containing the plugin. (The plugin doesn’t actually need to be in its own subfolder, but it’s recommended you place it there.) Go to the Plugins tab in your WordPress administration console and activate the plugin.

Usage

Once the plugin has been activated, go to the Options tag and click on Privacy Policy. Reasonable defaults will be selected for the privacy policy, but change them as appropriate and press the Update Options button to store the new settings.

Now create the privacy policy page for your site. The easiest way to do this is to press the Create Page button at the bottom of the options page. This creates a static page with the given title and slug (path) that displays a privacy policy based on the current settings.

Alternatively, you can simply insert a privacy policy onto an existing page using the special trigger text:

    <!-- privacy-policy -->

anywhere on the page. When the page is displayed, the trigger is replaced with the current privacy policy.

That’s it! Short and simple.

Future Plans

If there’s enough interest, I will add features to this plugin such as:

  • Support for different privacy policies (perhaps based on locale?)
  • Multi-lingual support
  • Squeeze pages
  • More configurability

Just leave a comment here and we can discuss it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am and is filed under Plugins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

55 Responses to “Privacy Policy Plugin For WordPress”

  1. […] check it out here: Privacy Policy Plugin For WordPress Subscribe! Social Bookmark This! These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can […]

  2. Thanks Eric! Much appreciated.

  3. Thank you so much for this plugin. It is very easy to use and
    the page created is so complete.
    I will surely spread the word about this plugin.

    Rudy

  4. […] Privacy Policy WordPress Plugin by Eric […]

  5. […] Privacy Policy Plugin for WordPress […]

  6. Great help to us all, Eric, thanks. And to Rudy (an dothers who may be amazed at that is needed), this is why some of my sites haven’t yet had a privacy policy displayed, it’s darn complicated to do right.

  7. Thanks Eric,

    I didn’t even realise Google was now requiring this, so this was a timely update.

    I’ll go add this plugin to my WP blogs with Adsense & put this baby to bed… :)
    As always, more great info (and s/w) from your good self ;)
    Eran M
    Blogging Traffic Secrets

  8. Much appreciated.

  9. […] you’re a WordPress user, Eric Giguere made the job a bit easier for you with his new Privacy Policy Plugin for WordPress, which you can install for free on any or all of your WordPress blogs. It generates […]

  10. One more thing - what about a privacy policy plug-in for blogs on other platforms like blogspot.com ?

  11. Thanks Eric

    Like Eran, I did not realise that this was what Google actually wanted, their T&C are a little vague. I spent all morning trying to find some more useful info.
    I’ve added it to my blog and included some words in a blog post. I will be using a similar page on all my websites from now on.
    Thanks again
    Graham Lee
    Respond2Net

  12. I’m not sure I could write a plugin for all the platforms, but perhaps a standalone privacy policy generator would do? I should be able to adapt the plugin code for that pretty quickly.

  13. […] I was getting a bit overwhelmed at the thought of having to come up with a privacy policy for each of the web-sites that I run, but Eric Giguere has made it easy for us by creating a Wordpress Privacy Policy Plugin. […]

  14. The right tool at the right time. Keep up the good work.

  15. […] Last week, Google started requiring AdSense publishers to include a privacy policy on any site displaying AdSense ads. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blogs, then Eric Giguere has a new plugin for you that generates such a privacy policy automatically. You can download the plugin from HERE […]

  16. Thanks for making this plugin.

    However, it would be more useful if users could amend or modify this plugin to suit the wording to their own tastes easily, instead of having to open up the file itself, because on Manage Pages, you can’t see the text. Maybe an options page that shows the text preview and ability to amend it?

    But still, it’s a novel concept to create a plugin just for this purpose.

  17. Yes, I’d like to expand it to make it more configurable. I thought I’d just get it out the door first, though, and see what people wanted.

  18. I have subscrived to your RSS Feed.

    If you have a new version for translation into Portuguese, let me know.

    rui

  19. Are you sure that you also don’t have to create a machine readable xml file?

    IE requires this to read a sites privacy policy. Could you add this to this plugin?

  20. […] Writing a privacy policy can be a royal pain if you have never done it before. Thankfully Eric Giguere hss come to the rescue of WordPress users and created the Privacy Policy Plugin. […]

  21. Hi,

    Useful plugin. Thanks a lot.

    Bendz

  22. […] a privacy policy isn’t too big of a deal. In fact, Synclastic has already made a plugin for WordPress to generate a privacy policy for your blog that conforms to […]

  23. […] Download Link […]

  24. Very good stuff, reduce time for who have a lot of WordPress Sites. Thanks.

  25. […] To make your life easier, I’m going to share a useful tip: you don’t have to invent a policy yourself, cause it’s already done. In fact, there’s a WordPress plugin which creates a simple privacy policy you can then insert into any of your blog pages: Synclastic Privacy Policy Plugin. […]

  26. Great, thanks very much … this will be very helpful.

    As you adapt this for future releases, and look to make it more configurable, can I suggest one thing?

    I’d like to be able to link to a “Contact” page, rather than simply put my email address on the site. Anything to keep the spam onrush to a dull roar.

    But once again, thanks for doing this.

  27. […] Did you know that a privacy policy is now required for all Google Adsense publishers? If not, you may like to read a summarizing of the changes over at Jensense. There has probably never been a better time to install the Synclastic privacy policy plugin. […]

  28. […] to do. If you want to add a privacy policy to a Wordpress blog, I recommend this very easy to use privacy policy Wordpress plugin. If you don’t have a Wordpress blog, but have a php-based website, then Nullamatix has a […]

  29. Great job ! Works Well !

    Thanks!

  30. […] install privacy policy plugin disini 2. kemudian extract dan upload menuju folder wp-content/plugins pada blog anda 3. aktifkan plugin […]

  31. […] Plugin HomePage. […]

  32. […] Neste Post vou-vos apresentar um plugin que pode facilitar a vida a quem ainda está a pensar num texto para a politica de privacidade. O plugin chama-se Privacy Policy e pode-se baixar deste endereço: Politica de Privacidade […]

  33. […] plugin is available from the Synclastic blog, and it is simple to use. Just install like any ordinary wordpress plugin and activate […]

  34. Excellent plugin….real time saver!
    Thanks Eric!!

    Alex

  35. […] to make your job easier, here comes a Wordpress Plugin for Privacy Policy by Eric Giguere. The plugin is required for self-hosted WordPress 2.0 or […]

  36. […] install privacy policy plugin disini 2. kemudian extract dan upload menuju folder wp-content/plugins pada blog anda 3. aktifkan plugin […]

  37. Thanks for this one. This will make it easier to plug the privacy policy, especially if you are owning several sites.

    more power!

  38. This is a usefel pluggin for me. I’ve downloaded. So I just go to my cpanel to upload it. Thanks alot.

  39. Tried it on a new 2.5 blog. Didn’t seem to work very well. It created the privacy page alright, But, there was no text (just the html privacy-policy comment). And, somehow I ended up with three different pages while trying to click on the “reload defaults” and “update options” buttons.

    Looking at your code I can see where it’s supposed to be creating text. I’m just not sure why it didn’t.

    I think the plugin idea is good. For future versions you might want to consider something like this page http://www.serprank.com/privacy-policy-generator/adsense-policy-1.php which allows you to specifically name the vendor ads that might appear on the page.

  40. Me again. I finally tracked it down. The issue was not with the Privacy plugin but with Contact Form 7. For whatever reason, CF7 was interfering with a sholw set of plugins. Perhaps you could contact them and figure it out together?

    I’d still like to see the type of options as in the link I posted. But, overall, good job.

  41. […] for Wordpress blogs, this Privacy Policy plugin will do the job for you. Thanks to Eric at Synclastic for writing this […]

  42. […] may not be realistic for all. There have been a few different adsense privacy policy generators and WordPress plugins pop up that would probably be better than nothing, but you should always seek legit legal advice […]

  43. Eric,

    Just quick Thank You for making this plugin.

    Cheers,
    Mike

  44. There are 3 kinds of people in this world.
    People that make things happen! :)
    People that watch things happen…and
    Those poor souls that wonder what happened
    http://www.thousanddollarprofits.com/103010

  45. […] ???????????????????????????????? Privacy Policy Plugin Related Posts?????? ????? ?????????Landing […]

  46. […] April 24, 2008Privacy Policies for Adsense Advertisers Recently Google Adsense have made some changes to the terms and conditions. From now on all websites that carry Adsense need to carry a page with a privacy policy. This will be a bit of a pain for many people however I came across a plug-in for WordPress that will automatically add a privacy policy to all WordPress blogs. The plug-in can be downloaded from the following URL: http://www.synclastic.com/plugins/privacy-policy/ […]

  47. […] Wordpress Privacy Plugin […]

  48. […] for Wordpress blogs this Privacy Policy plugin will do the job for you. Thanks to Eric at Synclastic for creating it. BookmarkBookmark and Share […]

  49. […] first step is to get the privacy policy plugin for WordPress. You can either install the plugin manually or with something like OneClick, an automatic plugin […]

  50. […] first step is to get the privacy policy plugin for WordPress. You can either install the plugin manually or with something like OneClick, an automatic plugin […]

  51. Thanks to all. This is great info to me.

  52. Hi Eric,

    Thanks for creating this. It will be a real time saver because I have several sites and hate updating them manually.

    -R

  53. […] Heureusement pour les utilisateurs de Wordpress il est possible de mettre en place une politique de confidentialité qui plaira à Adsense assez facilement grâce à un plugin nommé : Privacy Policy Plugin […]

  54. […] privacy policy was generated by the Privacy Policy for WordPress […]

  55. […] for Wordpress blogs this Privacy Policy plugin will do the job for you. Thanks to Eric at Synclastic for creating […]

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