One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to break the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with various laws and regulations, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring 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 post, we look at a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal 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 for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into various leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not in compliance, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that 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 certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based web presence.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress sites with over twenty customizable legal templates for your online business …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly legally compliant:
Very Easy To Install
Compliance Bar installs like any other plugin. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your administrator login and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
You can easily make changes to the pre-built legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to help users.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice 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.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any pages that are irrelevant.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site publishes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU 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 displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Using The Plugin
Once you have installed the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information in your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages made available:
- 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
You can create compliance pages for your website or blog quickly and easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. 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: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily edit and delete the compliance page templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your legal templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (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 “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, 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 will display 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 feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area 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 a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” tab …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials and comments that plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin 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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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Here are some additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you include adult content on your site, 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 support to assist you if you experience any issues. You also have access to an entire set of training videos.
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 (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the purchasing price.
Plugin Price
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own sites. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you want. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal 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 of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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