One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website or blog needs to comply with various laws and regulations, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is a significant aspect of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial 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 close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into many advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your site complies with 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 terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for your online presence.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven sites that contains over twenty customizable legal disclaimers for your online presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Ready To Use In Minutes
Compliance Bar installs like every other plugin. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WP admin user area and activate.
Editable Compliance Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the built-in legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to assist users with anything they need.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that are not required.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – The plugin will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers your business from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – 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 they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will have access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your business details can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate and display the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – 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 can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily customize and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed 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, image 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 Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display 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 front page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (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 “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 will display links to your compliance pages using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want 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 record 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 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 Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” screen, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments users have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are a few extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes content that is considered inappropriate for persons below a certain age, 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 team to assist you if you experience any problems. Plugin users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
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 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchasing price.
Product Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on one site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you need. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar Plugin product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the product website 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 Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Plugin Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have 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 help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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