One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good 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 fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into many leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, 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 online business is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business may become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing in your website, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for your site.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Easy And Quick To Install
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily make changes to the built-in templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to help you if you experience any issues.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire 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 with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that are irrelevant.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these features:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s 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 that notifies visitors and protects your site from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will then get access to a number of sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile fields inside your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available to plugin users:
- 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 create legal pages for your blog or website simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 Plugin: Compliance Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can edit and delete the legal disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing 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, icon size, specifying 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically 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 complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses in other sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU 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 Compliance Bar plugin lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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 compliance page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify 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 Plugin Users
Below are a few of the testimonials plugin customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Below are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to help users. Users also get access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single User Personal License – Can be installed on one domain that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on all domains that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin seller when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. 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 Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: 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 of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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