One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking a law or regulation.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your online presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into many leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, 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 in compliance, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance 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 website become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If you suspect that your website is lacking in aspects of compliance, we review below a simple WordPress plugin that you should know more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress-powered websites that includes over 20 customizable legal templates for your online business …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily edit the default compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated support to help you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits of using the plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: Compliance Bar 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 - an entire library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that are not necessary.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many unique features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects you from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of your compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available, addressing all areas of compliance:
- 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 legal pages for your site is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily customize and delete your legal disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(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 various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular 3rd-party theme frameworks (e.g. 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 will display links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU 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” tab …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” section, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are just a few of the testimonials users have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”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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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers 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 Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to assist you. You also have access to video training manuals.
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 hours (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Licensing Price
- Single Site Licensing – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product retails for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, 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-powered sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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