One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your web presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into a range of leading advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using online, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
If your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin that you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users that includes over twenty customizable compliance pages for your online presence …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site compliant:
Easy, Quick And Simple To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WordPress administrator section and activate.
Editable Compliance Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the prebuilt legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the visual editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated support to help you if you experience any issues.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete 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 make sure that the built-in 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.
- Use For 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 which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many great features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe 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 plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, the plugin’s “Settings” area is added to your WP backend.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked their site:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily create compliance pages for your website or blog simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive 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 Plugin: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete the legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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, and more …
(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 website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme (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 normal “static” 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 displays 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 to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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 edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials customers have published about Compliance Bar:
”WOW” 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)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some additional ways to 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 refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to assist users. Users also get access to full video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on 1 domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on multiple of your own sites. Can be installed on any client site 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. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing information: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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