One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is a significant aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into most leading advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your site become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
If you suspect that your website lacks in areas of compliance, there is a simple WordPress plugin you will probably be interested in knowing more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven sites with over 20 customizable compliance templates for your digital business …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Set Up. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs like any plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin area and activate.
Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily make changes to the built-in legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to help you if you experience any issues.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and leave out all other unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to site owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
Once the plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP admin area.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can input your business information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate and display the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot 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 plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance templates available to plugin users:
- 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 or blog quite easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can edit and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from 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. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (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 “regular” WordPress 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 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 the compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab 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 more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations 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 Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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” section …
(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 legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have submitted for Compliance Bar:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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 useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content that is considered inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you with anything you need. Plugin users also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the purchasing price.
Product Licensing Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price at the time this content was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the product developer when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
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 to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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