One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken a law or regulation.
Your digital presence needs to comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may probably 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 good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into various other advertising and merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of being 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 solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your site become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in terms of compliance, below we discuss a simple WordPress plugin you will probably be interested in using.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven websites with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your site …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs just like any WordPress plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Legal Page Templates
Easily make changes to the default compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to help users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits of using this plugin include the following:
- Customized 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 complicated to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WP users. Here are just some of those:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your website from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area is added to your WP backend.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked their website:
- 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 compliance pages for your website or blog can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image 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 are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can customize and delete your legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: 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. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (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, 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 a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar 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” tab, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that plugin users have written about Compliance Bar:
”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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”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)
Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content that is inappropriate for persons below a certain age 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 a dedicated team to assist you. You also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hrs (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Cost
- Single User License – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you want. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of the Compliance Bar software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the price when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer 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 Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal 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 demo videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, 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 and blogs. 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 – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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