One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your internet presence must comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses, 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 look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an essential aspect of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into a range of other advertising or merchant networks.
If your web presence is not compliant, you could end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, we review below a simple WordPress plugin that you may be interested in using.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users that includes over twenty customizable legal disclaimers for your website …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website instantly compliant:
Fast Installation
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily edit the pre-built templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist users if they experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a complete library of training videos is provided if you need assistance.
- Use In All Countries: 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 On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to web site owners. Here are just some of these features:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Using The Plugin
Once you have installed the plugin, users will then get access to various settings pages.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information you have entered into your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available, addressing all aspects of compliance:
- About Us
- AdSense Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreements
- Affiliate Disclosure Statement
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can modify and delete your compliance page templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your compliance templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you 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, image size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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 source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays 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 feature the 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 content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create several Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and even 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 you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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 sourced from 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 compliance page 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 …
Testimonials
Here are just some testimonials and comments customers have submitted regarding 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)
***
”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Plugin Tips
Here are a few useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site contains content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist users if they experience any issues. You also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the product retails for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin 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
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users 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
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. 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.
***