One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your website must comply with many laws, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious 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 review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into most advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, 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 website complies with legal requirements and guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this article.
If your web site lacks in aspects of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites that you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP administrator section and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the pre-built compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to assist users if they experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided if you need help.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative 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 On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the pages you need to add to your site and leave out unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate 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 displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, users have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can input your business details into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the 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
You can easily and quickly create compliance pages for your website or blog by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – 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 default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily modify and delete the legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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 settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 displays links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that restricts access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full 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 a multitude of uses in other areas of 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 period, and record 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 your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin lets you manage 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 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” tab, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials From Plugin Customers
Here are just a few of the testimonials and feedback that users have written about the 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)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to help users if they experience any issues. Users also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single Site License – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Install the plugin on multiple of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. 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 Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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