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 digital presence must comply with a wide range of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your online presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a number of leading advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if your business online is not in compliance, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations 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 using online, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your site.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website compliant:
Quick & Easy Installation
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other WordPress plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
Easily modify the prebuilt compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated plugin support to help users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that are unnecessary.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – The plugin will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are 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 plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers you from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically 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 – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users get access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates available, addressing all aspects of compliance:
- 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 easily create legal pages for your website simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can modify and delete your legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular 3rd-party theme frameworks (like 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” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and record 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 do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The Compliance Bar 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” 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” screen, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are just some testimonials users have provided for the Compliance Bar 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)
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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)
Plugin Tips
Here are some additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published content for adult readers, 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 24/7 plugin support to assist users if they experience any difficulties. You also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the cost of purchasing.
Plugin Cost
- Single Site License – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on multiple sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was published. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Additional Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get This 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.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: 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 is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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