One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your digital presence must comply with various laws, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list 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 web apps, and you won’t be allowed into most leading advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your online business is not compliant, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and 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 are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are cost-effective solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
If your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Set Up. Ready To Use In No Time.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Compliance Page Templates
Easily modify the built-in templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to help you.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is provided if you need assistance.
- 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 built-in legal page templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many unique features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Features – Details
Once the plugin has been installed, users get access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your business details into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically populate the information from your User Profile fields into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available to plugin users:
- 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 site by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – 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 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily modify and delete your legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 will display links to your compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar 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 – Screenshot 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 compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Useful Tips
Below are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your site, 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 a dedicated support team to assist users if they experience any difficulties. You also have access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Price
- Single Site Licensing – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all of your own sites. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for the Compliance Bar product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller 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 Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For demo videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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