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 intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your online presence is an integral aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into a range of leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could also face 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 site complies with all legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business may be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using in your website, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in terms of compliance, below we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable legal pages for your web presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any other plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin user account and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Compliance Page Templates
Easily edit the prebuilt legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist users if they experience any difficulties.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Customized Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is provided if you need help.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the templates provided with Compliance Bar 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 kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that you don’t need.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your website contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects you from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, users will get access to various settings pages.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of your compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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 check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can modify and delete your compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying which pages should be included in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and capture 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 you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar 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” 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” screen, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials that plugin customers have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Plugin Tips
Below are some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content that is inappropriate for minors on your website, 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 plugin support to help you if you experience any problems. You also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your purchasing price.
Software Price
- Single User Personal License – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple of your own domains. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
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 Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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