How to get a privacy policy in WordPress

There are multiple ways to get a privacy policy into WordPress, either builtin, via external resources or via plugin. Let’s look into the different possibilities and their advantages and disadvantages.

What is a privacy policy?

First off all, let’s figure out what a privacy policy actually is. Since privacy laws usually require to inform the user about what you’re doing with their data, the privacy policy is usually a document (web page) where the user can get information about which and how data from them is processed, collected and shared with third-parties. Also, it contains information about the rights of the user regarding these data as well as a contact information where the user can get additional information about these data or withdraw a given consent into data collection and processing.

Why you need a privacy policy

It’s important to mention that in practice, you always need a privacy policy. At least when you have visitors from Europe. In the US, it’s a little bit different and depending on the state you’re living in. However, as long as you don’t geo-block Europeans from accessing your website, you always need it. Even though the laws often don’t actually contain the words “privacy policy”, you usually have to inform the user about actually happening data processings, collections, shares and the rights the user has to stop processing their data. And since the web is built the way it is, you automatically collect personal information that requires a privacy policy solely through a page visit of your website by the user (since you always collect and process the IP address, for instance).

Via WordPress suggestion

WordPress has builtin support for a privacy policy page. It provides the possibility to create a page from Settings > Privacy and has certain suggestions as a “Privacy Policy Guide” in a different tab there. By creating a page from there, all suggestions are inserted into a new page. You need to review and adjust it according to your needs. Third-party plugins may extend this content, but only as suggestion. As soon as you’ve created the privacy policy page, you are responsible to update it as soon as you change something on your website. The content will not be changed automatically. Additionally, many plugins don’t support these suggestions.

Via third-party generator

Privacy policy generators are great to quickly get the work done: having a privacy policy. They usually force you to link back to their generator as a source reference and while being modular, you need to update them manually if you changed something on your website.

Via lawyer

The most secure way to create a privacy policy is through a lawyer. However, this is rather expensive and often not practical, especially for hobby projects. Besides that, it often means running costs for adjustments necessary either through legal changes or changes on your website. Additionally, you always need to manually manage your privacy policy.

Via plugin

With Impressum Plus, you get an extensive privacy policy generator right within your WordPress instance. It knows your system and can automatically trigger displaying certain parts of your privacy policy without any action of you, e.g. it automatically enables sections regarding an online shop if you enable a shop plugin, for instance WooCommerce. But it can also detect contact form plugins or whether you allow commenting on your site or not.

By using such automations, you don’t have to update your privacy policy every time you change something on your website, as it is already done for you by detecting such changes.

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Set the page as privacy policy page

However you set up your privacy policy page, make sure to set it as privacy policy page. This way it will be displayed automatically on certain locations, e.g. below the login page, and behaves slightly differently (e.g. it cannot be edited by anyone with the capability to edit pages). To do so, go to Settings > Privacy and select your page in the select of the option Change your Privacy Policy page.

Conclusion

There are multiple different ways to implement a proper privacy policy into your WordPress website. Some of them are easy to use, some of them are not. Some are completely free, some of them very expensive. In the end, it’s up to you to choose one of the possible solutions – as long as you make sure that you use one of them, since a privacy policy is usually required.