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 must comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing on your website, and
- There are cost-effective plugins for WordPress website owners that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance & disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based web presence.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-install WordPress plugin that contains over 20 customizable legal disclaimers for your site …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Quick Installation
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP admin area and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
You can easily make changes to the prebuilt templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to assist you.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - 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 templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For Every Website Purpose: As long as your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that you don’t require.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to WP users. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Display Attractive Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business 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 notifying users and covering you from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
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,” “Contact Phone,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance 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 compliance pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from 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 Compliance Bar 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: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily customize and delete your compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your compliance pages 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
You have 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 should be included 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 different 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 3rd-party theme framework (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” 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 using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that should 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 site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create several customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
Compliance Bar 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” screen …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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 disclaimers 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 getting plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect 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 the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish content for adult readers on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users. Users also have access to full video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your cost of purchase.
Plugin Pricing
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you need. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the product retails for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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