One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising or merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your site become more compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your admin account and activate.
Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the prebuilt templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to help you.
Some additional benefits of using this plugin include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the legal page templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For Any Website Purpose: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that are unnecessary.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, you have access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your business information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information from your User Profile inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance pages available to WordPress users:
- 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 is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can customize and delete the compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages to include an icon for in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your home 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 multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Image 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” area, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials and comments that users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to assist users with anything they need. Users also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single – Install the plugin on one site that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the product retails for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin author when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend 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 – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. 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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