One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website needs to comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, some of which you are probably not even 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 good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into various leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, 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 website is not compliant, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based online business.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any regular WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin login and activate.
Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
Easily modify the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to help users with anything they need.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal page templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your site runs on 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, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that you don’t require.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to web site owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using The Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information you have input into your User Profile fields inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your website quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page 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 default 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: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete the compliance disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the compliance templates 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 offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying which pages should be included in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 displays links to your legal through 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. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab 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 more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to 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” section …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Image sourced from 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 pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Plugin Customers
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments that customers have submitted for 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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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Below are some additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out 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 view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you. Users also get access to full video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy 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 twice the amount of your cost of purchase.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on one site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was correct at the time this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product seller 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 the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar
Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading 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 how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. You must 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 wherever your business is based.
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