One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to 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 applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of other advertising or merchant networks.
If your online presence is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and guidelines, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
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 and local laws that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress users that can help your site become compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
If you suspect that your website falls short in aspects of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin that includes over twenty customizable legal disclaimers for your digital business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Legal Page Templates
You can easily edit the prebuilt compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For Any Website Purpose: If your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are not required.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to site owners. Below we have listed just some of those features:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and 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 compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information from your User Profile fields in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the site:
- 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 website by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance 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 is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can edit and delete the compliance disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying which pages to include an icon for 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 – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular 3rd-party themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically 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 devices, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The plugin lets you edit 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” area, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials plugin users have submitted for 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)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Here are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to assist you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchasing price.
Plugin Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Can be installed on all of your own sites. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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