One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with various laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial losses, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into various advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your website is not compliant, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your website falls short in terms of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin that you will probably be very interested in using.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Templates
You can easily modify the built-in templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users if they experience any problems.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is available if users need help.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal templates provided in 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 site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that are irrelevant.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering you from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using The Plugin
Once you have installed the plugin, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your business details into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information from your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance templates made available:
- 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
You can easily and quickly create compliance pages for your site simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can edit and delete the legal disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the compliance pages 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU 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 Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(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 legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are just some testimonials users have provided for the 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:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish content that is considered inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to help users. Plugin users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Cost
- Single Site Personal License – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was correct when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
What We Recommend
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.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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