One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website has to comply with many federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into most leading advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your online business is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business could be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
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 could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using in your website, and
- There are plugins for WordPress website owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you will probably be interested in using.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable compliance templates for your digital business …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your admin user section and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily make changes to the default legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Website Purposes: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the legal pages you want to add to your site and leave out unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to site owners. Here are just some of those features:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin can record the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will then have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin when we last checked their website:
- About Us
- AdSense Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreements
- Affiliate Disclosure Statement
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete your legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing your compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed 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, image size, specifying which pages to include an icon for 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and even record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Image sourced from 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 pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are just some testimonials and comments plugin customers have written about Compliance Bar:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are some useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is considered inappropriate for minors on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users if they experience any problems. You also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchasing price.
Software Pricing
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the product author when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already 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 in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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