One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken a law or regulation.
Your internet presence needs to comply with many federal, state and even local laws and regulations, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules are constantly changing, it’s important to 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 digital presence is a fundamental component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into many other advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If you are not compliant, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your business online is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business could become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using in your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
If you suspect that your web site falls short in areas of compliance, we review below a simple WordPress plugin that you will probably be interested in using.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other plugin. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your admin login and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily make changes to the pre-built compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the visual editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Additional benefits of using the plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: As long as your site runs on 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 required.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the plugin is installed, users get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can input your business information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin last time we checked their website:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your website quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete your compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (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 devices, 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 will display links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, 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 Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar 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 – 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” section, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have written about the Compliance Bar 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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”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 Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are some additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to assist you. Plugin users also have access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single User License – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Install the plugin on multiple sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of the Compliance Bar Plugin software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software sells for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
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 website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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