Admin Pages for Your Website

If you are going to expect anyone to take your website seriously, even Google spiders, then you will need to have the appropriate admin pages installed on your website, and they must be made visible, linking from someplace on your website. They could be accessible via your main menu or even in the footer of your website but they must be visible and clickable links. Note that these are “pages” not “posts” so make sure you create them correctly if you are using a web interface, like WordPress.

There are four admin pages that you should create and have clickably accessible from your website, at the very least from the home page, they are About, Contact, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy.

About

Your page, which should be titled About, not About Me, just simply “About.” That is all. This can be a short 500-word description about you and your website, explaining your intentions, and what visitors are likely to find there.

For ideas, look around at other websites, especially those that might be similar to yours. This does not need to be a literary masterpiece, but it does need to be one of your pages and it does need to be prominently accessible.

Contact

How are people going to know how to contact you if you don’t make it known and obvious? The easier you are to contact; the more people will reach out to you. Again, this page is simply titled “Contact,” not contact us or contact me.

It should have the name of your website, your name, a physical address (a P.O. Box is acceptable, but a physical address recognized by Google maps will give you an extra hit in your search engine ranking), a phone number (I suggest using a Google phone number here, if you can), and your hours of operation.

Even if you don’t have actual hours of operation right now, put some days of the week and hours you intend to be open for business in this section. You can modify it later. No putting TBA or to be announced at a later date. Your site must appear as if it is open for business now to be taken seriously.

If you’re even slightly paranoid about the Internet, this may be intimidating, but don’t let that overwhelm you or get in the way of this great work that you are going to be doing in the world. If it makes you feel better, you can get a mail drop service, and a burner phone to use as your business phone. Don’t let your insecurities keep you down.

Terms of Service

Your terms of service page (TOS) should be titled “Terms of Service,” and helps to protect you and your business from unscrupulous or predato0ry users. If offers you legal protection as it is recognized as a binding contract that your users agree to when using your website and is defensible in court.

There are many good free templates out there that you can use, simply find one that you like and modify it for your own purposes. You can borrow elements you like that you have found on another website, but do not copy and paste from someone else’s site as terms of service are protected by copyright once they have been posted.

Don’t stress out on this part. Again, you can modify this later if you want once you have legal staff onboard.

Privacy Policy

You have heard a lot about privacy policies in the news lately, and your site needs to display one. It is not legally required if you do not collect data from visitors to your website, and you may never have any intention of doing so. If that’s true, then make sure that is stated on your privacy policy.

Be aware, though, that software that is hosting of running your website may be tracking your visitors, so even if you intend to never collect data from your visitors, your site may be doing so unbeknownst to you. That is why it is helpful to have boilerplate statements that account for third-party software to protect yourself from liability.

Again, there are plenty of free templates that you can use and are easily findable by searching Google for a free privacy policy template. Use one, modify it for your specific needs, and post it.

Make certain that all these administrative pages, About, Contact, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy, can be found by clickable links via your website, at least the home page.

 

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