One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website must comply with many laws, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an integral component of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(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 offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing in your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your web site falls short in terms of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Configure. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin user login and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the default legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Legal Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin creates 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 available.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog is built with 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, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to site owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If your site contains content that needs to 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 and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, users have access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the plugin’s compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates available, covering 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily edit and delete the legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages should be included 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in other sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme framework (like 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 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to be featured …
PopUps
If your website contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and even 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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 disclaimer 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 …
Feedback From Plugin Users
Below are a few of the testimonials that customers have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” 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)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains content that is considered inappropriate for persons below a certain age, 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 support to assist users if they experience any issues. You also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back 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.
Plugin Cost
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Install the plugin on multiple of your own sites. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is selling for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, please note that 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 fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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