Tim's Wee Part of the World

New FTC laws will be in force from Dec 1st 2009. Now I am not a legal eagle so this is my own personal summary of what I understand these new laws to be.

They are regarding the requirement to disclose any financial gain that will be made by any person making a product or service review/endorsement. In our case, on a website platform. Again, that’s my gist of the situation and I hope it’s close to the mark.

Is it Fair?

I think so…

For one thing, it gives the “would be purchaser” something to ponder before splashing their cash on something based upon someones recommendation. ie If this person is going to make a commission from this review, is it the truth or are they just wanting to make a quick buck?

Personally, I only review things I would and do use myself. It’s only those things that are worthy of the words I spend time writing about it. I do know there are those who will write anything to make a quick buck. Well I’ve got my name and contact details out in front here, so if I’m giving glowing reviews on anything that is going to end up with someone making a purchase and being pissed off… then I aint going to be very popular. And I don’t like pissing anyone off. It’s just bad business. I’ve also been at the other end, having had both good and bad experiences.

So again, these new laws will help increase the protection of the buyer, by having any reviewer give a really honest review, dirt and all, so the potential buyer can make an informed purchase.

Well that’s the idea anyway, as to whether some dishonest people find a way to work this to their favor, only time will tell.

As long as the FTC doesn’t go too crazy and start turning peoples worlds upside down unfairly…. The word’s still getting out guys and we’re doing our best!

Who does this affect?

Anyone that has a website, blog etc that talks about other peoples stuff and has an affiliate link. So if you have an affiliate link, you stand to make a commission and you need to have this stated on your website to that effect. That’s in my own simple terms… Remember I’m not able to give legal advice and this is just my own opinion.

What can you do to implement this?

I did find this website…http://disclosurepolicy.org ( I will not make any financial gain if you click on that link and use the service! After all its FREE! )

While it’s probably a good start and better than nothing, I can’t say for sure that this will “please” the FTC but hey, we are trying!

Now how do I put this on a WordPress Site.

This is something I’m a little more qualified to talk about. But I must state that there will be other, maybe better, ways to do this. ( I love disclaimers too).

So I’ve already gone to http://disclosurepolicy.org and checked the boxes and amswered the questions and generated the resulting disclosure statements…Now I have to  put it somewhere! Well that’s what you are wanting to know.. where do you put it?

I created a New Page, ( not a post ) but a New Page. Called it disclaimer – all lower case – and saved the generated text in it…

Beware of having Your Email Addresses on Your Websites!

One thing and this is a major peeve I have with Email Addresses on anything out there that can be scanned by the “aholes that use our emails addresses for evil”. Never Ever have your email address written in it’s natural form. Now at this site, it will ask you for an email address to put in. This is solely up to you, but personally, I put mine in, BUT I altered it a wee bit…

Here’s what you DONT DO – Never Write this in it’s Pure HTML Form. For Example ( and I hope this is a really bogus email address… thorax1099@theweebinthemiddleofinsects1099.com )

That’s a No No! You could use thorax1099 ‘AT’ theweebitinthemiddleofinsects1099 ‘DOT’ com with a note ( replace the words in ” with their symbols ). For one thing, this kind of email address has to be typed in… If it’s read ( scanned ) the “aholes that use our emails addresses for evil” software has to do some work… I’m not saying that their software does or doesn’t but it if it hinders them, I’m all for it…

There is way number 2 which looks more appealing. In the actual HTML – you can replace the ‘@’ with the characters ;#064 so you’d write thorax1099;#064theweebitinthemiddleofinsects1099.com

There are also javascript type solutions, but if your visitor has javascript disabled, well it’s not going to show up correctly at all!

I’ll just step off my High Horse on email addresses…..

Next…

Ok, so we have our disclosure statement, we’ve put it in a new page called disclosure ( you can call it what you like but I’m guessing it’s more search engine friendly ) and what about Where will this page live… Well I made my about me page the “parent” to the disclosure page. For no real reason but to tie it to something… I’m also going to be adding a “privacy” and “terms and conditions” pages as well. So they’ll be hanging off the about me page…. Which means – the “about me” page is the Parent. You’ll see this in your WordPress Admin area when you create this new disclosure page.

I Want it in the Footer!

Well it’s where all this kind of stuff should live! Isn’t it? Now this involves a bit of “tinkering” with your worpdress files. While not for the feint hearted, hopefully I’ll explain this well enough that you won’t be too scared to attempt this if you are a bit hesitant to start altering things… Hey, this was made for changing…So let’s change it…

Now this depends upon the theme you are using ( I’ll write more on the details later, I’m thinking a video is required… Have you joined my news letter yet? ) Most Themes have a footer.php file. You can access this in your WordPress Admin section and if you go to…

Appearance -> Edit  and select the footer.php file. ( yep this needs some pictures at least <insert images here…> ) and I added in this line…

Now my Footer looks like this….

<div id="footer">
<?php wp_footer();?>
</div><!-- footer -->
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
<div><p>Copyright &copy; 2009 <a href="<?php bloginfo("url"); ?>"><?php bloginfo("title");?> </a>| Powered by <a href="http://www.wordpress.org">WordPress</a> | Designed by <a href="http://www.bingowebdesign.info">Bingo</a> - The Web Design Experts</p>
</div>

and I added in this line…

<br /><a href="<?php $page = get_page_by_path('/about/disclosure');echo $page->URL?>" title="disclosure">Disclosure</a>

For some reason the above wasn’t working….So to keep it simple (KISS)

<br /><a href="/blog/about/disclosure" title="disclosure">Disclosure</a>

Which I’m showing in the next section in Bold, so you can see where I placed it.

<div id="footer">
<?php wp_footer();?>
</div><!-- footer -->
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
<div><p>Copyright &copy; 2009 <a href="<?php bloginfo("url"); ?>"><?php bloginfo("title");?> </a>| Powered by <a href="http://www.wordpress.org">WordPress</a> | Designed by <a href="http://www.bingowebdesign.info">Bingo</a> - The Web Design Experts</p>

<br /><a href="/blog/about/disclosure" title="disclosure">Disclosure</a>

<br /><a href="<?php $page = get_page_by_path('/about/disclosure');echo $page->URL?>" title="disclosure">Disclosure</a>
</div>

The WordPress Function get_page_by_path(‘/about/disclosure’) gives us the advantage of not needing to know anything more than where the pages lives. Remembering that I created the disclosure page with the about page being the parent. So there is no need to worry about the websites URL and under what path the blog is located. On this site, wordpress is installed under http://www.timbrownlaw.com/blog and I don’t need to worry about that as the function get’s than information internally when wordpress was installed.

I’ve had to put in the path msyelf. Now my wordpress installation hangs of the folder called blog ( yours might be different.) It may even be straight from the public_html folder in which case you will only need “/about/disclosure”.

Try it and see. It’ll get you going.

Just note that the disclosure page will be a menu item under your about page menu item if you have that functionality on your menus. That’s not a bad thing! We had set the about page to be the parent to the disclosure page. You can use the very same methods to add in any other pages you wish… for example a “privacy” and “terms and conditions” page. I would recommend you name the “terms and conditions page” with hyphens between the words – never use spaces ( although WordPress will fix it if you do use spaces ) . So you’ll end up with terms-and-condtions.

If you have any questions or it’s just not clear, please leave a comment!

See the result!

And don’t forget to Check out my Disclosure page – see the link at the end of the page…..

[UPDATE] – Here is something I’ve seen on some sites that sits bold and proud at the end of every page…

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