One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your internet presence needs to comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and 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 site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party 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 freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of leading advertising and merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using in your website, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this article.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your website.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
To learn more about this plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly compliant:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
Compliance Bar installs like any regular plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin user account and activate.
Editable Page Templates
You can easily edit the prebuilt legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated support team to help users with anything they need.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar 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 - a full library of training videos is available if users need help.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use For All Niches: If your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and leave out the unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to WP users. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to display content that should 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 or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WP admin area.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information you have entered into your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last checked their 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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 settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular 3rd-party themes (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 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 bar to display …
PopUps
If your site has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create several customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
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 …
Compliance Bar 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” screen …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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 legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials customers have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to help users if they experience any difficulties. Users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double your purchasing price.
Software Cost
- Single User License – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you like. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was current when this article was published. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin developer when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the plugin works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This 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, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Legal 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 of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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