One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential aspect of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into most other advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, if your website is not compliant, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws 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 endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this article.
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in aspects of compliance, there is a simple WordPress plugin that you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your administrator section and activate.
Easily Editable Legal Page Templates
Easily modify the pre-built compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to assist you if you experience any problems.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you want to include in your site and leave out all other irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to site owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are 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 displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (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 based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP backend.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can enter your business information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the information inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal page templates available to WordPress users:
- 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
You can create compliance pages for your website quickly and easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily modify and delete the legal disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device 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 through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, 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 source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
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 Section: 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” area, lists all of your legal pages 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 getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Below are just a few of the testimonials plugin users have published about 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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”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)
Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers 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 24/7 plugin support to help users if they experience any difficulties. Users also have 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 copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single User Licensing – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you want. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. 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 in your country or region.
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