One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken 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 loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital that you 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 aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into various advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic people or organizations.
At the very least, if your web presence is not in compliance, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, there is a simple WordPress plugin you will probably be interested in using.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Set Up. Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar installs just like any plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily edit the built-in templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to help users.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal templates provided in 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 Website Purposes: As long as your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that you don’t require.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is 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 plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers your site from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – The plugin can record your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your business information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the plugin last time we 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
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 additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete your legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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, 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular 3rd-party theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 compliance pages using a visually attractive 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 site includes content that should 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 site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want 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 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 need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” section, lists all of your compliance disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments that customers have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Here are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published content that is inappropriate for minors, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users with anything they need. You also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Pricing
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you need. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software sells for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price here: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how-to” videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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