One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website must comply with a number of laws, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be allowed into various advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If you are not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, it may impact on your visitors trust and confidence in doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
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 various legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress users that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your web site is lacking in terms of compliance, we discuss below a simple WordPress plugin you will probably be interested in using.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs just like every other WP plugin. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP admin account and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
Easily modify the prebuilt templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative 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 anywhere in the world.
- Use For Any Website Purpose: As long as your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and leave out all other irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the plugin has been installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the legal templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your site quite easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons are customizable. 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 Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can customize and delete the legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages should be included 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, 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 displays links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and even record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(EU Cookies Section: 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 legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback customers have submitted for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are some useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Minimizing 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 access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to assist users with anything they need. Users also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the cost of purchase.
Product Cost
- Single Site Licensing – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The price of the Compliance Bar plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim 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 a demo video of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, please note that 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 to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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