One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking the law.
Your digital presence must comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users 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 constantly change, it’s vital that you 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 a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into many leading advertising and affiliate marketing 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 you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites 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 article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
In this article, you will learn about a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your WordPress-based digital business.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users that includes over twenty customizable legal pages for your online business …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every other plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user section and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
Easily modify the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated support team to help you if you experience any problems.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the 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.
- Use For Any Website Purpose: 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 that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that you don’t require.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many unique features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering you from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP admin area.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can enter your business details into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal page templates available, covering all areas 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under 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 can be changed. 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: Compliance Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete your compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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 settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings 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 compliance pages using dynamic 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 has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also set 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 period, 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 your business is 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 manage 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” screen, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials that users have published about 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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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Here are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content for adults only on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to help users if they experience any problems. You also have access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice your purchase price.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was current at the time this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing information here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. 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 a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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