One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
Your website has to comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is an integral aspect of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into a range of advertising and merchant networks.
If you are not compliant, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress-driven sites containing over twenty customizable compliance disclaimers for your digital business …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily make changes to the prebuilt templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated plugin support to help you.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in 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 In All Niches: If your website is powered by 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, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, you will have 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 fields in this area where you can input your business details into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last checked their website:
- 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 create legal pages for your blog or website quite easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from 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 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can edit and delete your legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
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 record 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 Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The plugin 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” section …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Image 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 page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback plugin users have written about Compliance Bar:
”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)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your site includes content that is considered inappropriate for minors, 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 24/7 plugin support to assist you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version 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 double the amount of the cost of purchase.
Product Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to 25 domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you need. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing the Compliance Bar product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing at the time this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information here: Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional 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 a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 all legal requirements in your country or region.
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