One of the worst things that can happen to any 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 intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into many leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your web presence is not in compliance, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with the 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 may be promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a total compliance & disclaimer plugin for your online presence.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin section and activate.
Easily Editable Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit the built-in templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to assist users with anything they need.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For Any Website Purpose: As long as your site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe 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 visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that 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 – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, you will then have access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can enter your business details into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically insert the information from your User Profile into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal templates available, addressing all aspects 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your site by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of 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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily customize and delete your compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing your legal pages 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
The plugin offers 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in different 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 (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
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 displaying again within a specific time interval, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin 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” 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” screen, 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 getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials From Users
Here are some of the testimonials and feedback that users have written about 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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”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
Useful Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect 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 the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to assist users with anything they need. Plugin users also have access to 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 (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the purchase price.
Product Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on one domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on all of your own sites. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price above was current at the time this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the plugin seller when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For demo videos showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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