One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into many advertising or merchant networks.
If your online presence 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 you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulations, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that 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 many legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing online, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based website.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your web presence …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WordPress administrator login and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
Easily modify the pre-built legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated support to assist users with anything they need.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is provided if you need assistance.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default 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 On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you want to add to your site and ignore irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your website publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and protects you from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WP backend.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates 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 create legal pages for your site quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons are customizable. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can customize and delete the legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – 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. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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 main 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 an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific premium theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your site contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms and 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
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 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in Europe 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 …
The plugin lets you customize 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 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 edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials that customers have submitted regarding 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)
***
”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are a few useful ways you can 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.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content that is considered inappropriate for minors on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to assist users. Users also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all as many of your own domains as you need. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing above was correct at the time this article was published. This may not be the actual price set by the product developer when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. You must 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.
***