One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant 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 cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s vital 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 integral aspect of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into a number of leading advertising and merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic online users.
At the very least, if your web presence is not in compliance, it may impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services 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 may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
If your website is lacking in terms of compliance, we review below a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs that you may be interested in knowing more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every other plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Editable Page Templates
You can easily modify the default compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to help users with anything they need.
Additional benefits of 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.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if 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.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the legal pages you want to add to your site and leave out any unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to site owners. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’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 Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – 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 site, (even in the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the plugin has been installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate the information from your User Profile fields into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal pages available to plugin users:
- 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 compliance 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” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. 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: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete the legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (like 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 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 compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize 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 different uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and capture 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 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 …
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 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 compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials that plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you have adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to assist you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition 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.
Software Pricing
- Single User Personal License – Install the plugin on one domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of the Compliance Bar plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the site 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 – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already 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 peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 wherever your business is based.
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