One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website must comply with numerous laws and regulations, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into most other advertising and merchant networks.
If your online business is not compliant, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you are not compliant, trust and confidence in your business may become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this article.
If your web site is falling short in areas of compliance, we review below a simple plugin for WordPress sites that you should know more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your website …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your web site instantly compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Configure. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin account and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily modify the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: As long as your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the legal pages you need to add to your site and ignore all other unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of those features:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and protects your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Features – Details
Once the plugin has been installed, users will get access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates available:
- About Us
- AdSense Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreements
- Affiliate Disclosure
- Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Contact Us
- Copyright/DCMA Notice
- Disclaimer
- Double Dart Cookies
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- FTC Statement
- Legal Disclaimer
- Linking Policy
- Medical Disclaimer
- Privacy Policy
- Returns/Refund Policy
- Support
- Terms
- Terms & Conditions
- Testimonial Disclosure
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can modify and delete your compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting which pages should be included in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar has a non-intrusive way of notifying your visitors and covering you from non-compliance.
Page Templates
The “Page Templates” tab, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Below are just a few of the testimonials that users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content that is deemed inappropriate for underaged viewers on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to help users if they experience any issues. You also have access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin seller when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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