One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website must comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a number of other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and regulations, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress websites that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your site.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to help users if they experience any problems.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized 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 - an entire library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Niches: As long as your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the legal pages you want to add to your site and ignore unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of great features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of those features:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering you from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information from your User Profile into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of template pages made available by the plugin when we last checked their site:
- 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 website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. 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 Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can customize and delete the compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot 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. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device 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 legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and store 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 need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar 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” screen …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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 pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Here are some of the testimonials customers have provided for the Compliance Bar 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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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content for adults only on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to help you. Plugin users also have access to full video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 business hours (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Product License Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on 25 domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the pricing at the time this content was written. This may not be the actual price set by the product author when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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