One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial costs, but also the cost to 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 solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into many other advertising or merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and guidelines, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your web site is falling short in areas of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
Easily edit the default legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated support team to assist users if they experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default 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 For All Website Purposes: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are unnecessary.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that needs to 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, you will then get 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 categories in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal page templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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 legal pages for your site is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive 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: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can modify and delete the legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- 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. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular premium themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 will display links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are 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 …
Compliance Bar 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” 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 pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit 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 …
User Testimonials
Here are just some testimonials plugin users have submitted for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Below are a few extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to assist you with anything you need. You also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the purchasing price.
Plugin Price
- Single User License – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you need. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product retails for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. 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 ”how-to” videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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