One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with a wide range of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and 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 easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you won’t be allowed into various leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, 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 online business is not compliant, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing on your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites you may be very interested in using.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other plugin. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator login and activate.
Editable Compliance Page Templates
Easily modify the pre-built templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to assist you if you experience any difficulties.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal page 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 All Niches: As long as your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you need to add to your site and ignore all other unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – 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 – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information from your User Profile into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: 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” area lists all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of templates made available by the plugin last time we checked the 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can customize and delete your legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the legal templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: 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 different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display 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 your compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
The plugin lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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” screen, lists all of your legal disclaimer 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 updates …
Feedback From Customers
Below are a couple of the testimonials that plugin customers have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
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.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website contains content that is deemed inappropriate for minors, 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 a dedicated plugin support team to help users if they experience any difficulties. You also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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 hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you need. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing the Compliance Bar product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was correct when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page 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 a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
In Conclusion
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.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, please note that 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 of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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