All posts filed under: Anti-spam

The legal risk of continuing to email someone who unsubscribes from your email list

Published by Richard Best

Let’s set the scene In all likelihood, and for good reason, WordPress is the most popular blogging tool/CMS for those who wish to engage in online content marketing with a view to building an email subscriber list and sharing valuable content with those who have subscribed. These days, there are countless integrations between WordPress and email campaign providers like MailChimp and Aweber, it’s easy to enable social sharing, membership sites can be built with WordPress fairly easily, it’s easy to enable digital downloads, the list goes on. For this reason, many WordPress users will be collecting email addresses, sending email newsletters and campaigns, and so on. I turn now to Pat Flynn’s superb Ask Pat podcast, a spin-off of his Smart Passive Income blog and podcast. I do that because it was an episode of his podcast that gave me the idea for this post (thanks Pat). For those who don’t know, in his Ask Pat podcast, Pat takes recorded questions from members of his audience and answers them in the podcast. In episode #212, …

Legal checks when building a content-driven WordPress website

Published by Richard Best

Introduction Recently I’ve built two blogs (both running on WordPress of course). The first is this one and the second is a blog for a group of lawyers in the United Kingdom. The purpose of the second blog is to enable the lawyers to share their knowledge and thoughts on a particular area of practice with clients, potential clients and the wider legal community. As well as building the site, I also attended to the usual legal and related issues that arise with a content-driven website like a blog, just as I did for this site which is similar in many ways. I’ve done this sort of thing many times in the past, for myself, for colleagues and for clients. Each time I do it, I run through a range of legal and related checks in my mind that ought to be covered off. I thought it might be useful to document the checks for others building similar sites. The purpose of this post, then, is to do exactly that. The checklist covers the kinds …

Why legal stuff matters

Published by Richard Best

For some people, thinking about legal stuff may not be at the forefront of their minds when they’re developing, designing, launching or adding content to a WordPress website or developing and releasing a theme or plugin. I suspect it’s also not at the forefront of the minds of some people who launch commercial theme and plugin shops, release WordPress ebooks, produce WordPress podcasts, and so on. It’s easy to get caught in the moment and the excitement of developing, writing or releasing something new. I know what that’s like. Just as a lawyer building a website may pay little attention to something that a developer would consider crucial, so too can developers, designers, bloggers and entrepreneurs pay little attention to things that lawyers consider important if not crucial.  And, of course, in some cases people want to do what’s right or in their commercial interests but just don’t know what the relevant laws are or how they apply. The legal stuff does matter There are various reasons for sticking to the right side of the …