With new laws governing how websites are allowed to interact with users, the average website owner does not have the resources to make her website both legally compliant AND top quality.
Or does she?
Thankfully, today’s internet is not what it once was. Quality websites can be produced on the cheap, important legal text can be acquired for free in just minutes, and great images can be found 100% for free. The only problem is that it is hard to find good information about how to do it.
This article is a compilation of free website solutions that I discovered, and I hope it will help you.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. I am simply sharing some solutions from my own experience that I found to be helpful.
Create Important Legal Pages for Free
Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Cookies Policy, and Disclaimer
When writing a Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Cookies Policy, and Disclaimer page for a website there are a number of issues to consider. Are you displaying ads or selling products or services? Do you link to other websites? Are you collecting data from users? (Note: if you have a comments section or a contact page on your website you are probably collecting some form of personal user data).
In addition, there are local laws that you will want to be in full compliance with. Recently, the European Union implemented a new law designed to protect website users. Even if you are not located in the EU, you probably need to be in compliance with this law.
The average website owner does not have the resources to hire a legal team to write important legalistic text such as a Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Cookies Policy, and Disclaimer pages for her website. But she still needs to be in compliance with the law.
Fortunately, there are free resources available to help her do this.
Legal pages for the non-commerce website
Here are some easy resources for setting up your website’s Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Cookies Policy, and Disclaimer pages in just a few minutes:
- Privacy Policy Generator (GDPR compliant)
- Terms of Use Generator
- Cookie Policy Generator
- Disclaimer Generator
All you have to do it answer a few simple questions and the website gives you the text.
Legal pages for E-commerce website
Note: If your website sells products through the website itself, your text will need to cover that. Shopify does a glorious job of serving e-commerce store owners. And you don’t need to be a Shopify customer to use these free services:
This is a great free resource that Shopify is providing to e-commerce store owners for free. And it’s a good idea on their part, to gain favor with e-commerce store owners.
Free, no-strings-attached, website photos
Most website owners can’t afford to pay for professional stock photos. And as for the website owners who have plenty of money, many of them would rather use it for something besides stock photos.
Here are some great websites that offer high-quality images for free, no strings attached.
- FreeImages.com
- Unsplash
- Pixabay
- Morguefile
- PXhere.com
- FreeRangeStock
- LifeofPix
- Gratisography
- Search.CreativeCommons.org
- isorepublic
- StartupStockPhotos
- StockSnap.io
- PicJumbo
- Pexels
If you don’t want to go searching for the best images by going from website to website you can use Google to search the net for only free-use pictures. Very few people know about this search option that Google provides. Here’s what to do:
- Go to Google Images
- Enter your search query. So if you are looking for images pertaining to happiness, write “happiness.”
- Click “Tools”
- Choose the level of license you want to use. “Labeled for reuse with modification” basically means you can reuse it on your website even if you’re making money off of your site.
I’ve tried to provide links to image search engines that you can use for your website even if you don’t want to bother with giving credit. On the other hand, I would encourage you TO give credit where credit is deserved. It looks professional of you if you do so, and it’s good manners.
