One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website or blog needs to comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws, many of which you may probably 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 your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into many leading advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic people or organizations.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws 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 may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your digital business.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin that includes over twenty customizable compliance templates for your web presence …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Fast Installation
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin account and activate.
Easy To Edit Legal Page Templates
Easily make changes to the pre-built templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any problems.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default templates provided with 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 or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that you don’t need.
Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – 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 plugin displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once the plugin has been installed, users will have access to various settings.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin when we last checked their site:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your website or blog can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily customize and delete your compliance pages in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the compliance pages 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, 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings 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 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 bar …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
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” tab …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” area, lists all of your compliance disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials From Plugin Users
Here are just a few of the testimonials and comments plugin customers have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
***
”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
Here are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site published content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you if you experience any problems. Plugin users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hrs (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on multiple sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the 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 here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. 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 a demo video showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, 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 sites. We recommend downloading and 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 Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 in your country or region.
***