One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good 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 site compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your digital presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into many other advertising and affiliate 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, without making it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with legal requirements and guidelines, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
If you suspect that your website falls short in aspects of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-powered websites containing over twenty customizable legal disclaimers for your site …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin user area and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to assist users if they experience any difficulties.
Some additional benefits of this plugin include:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal templates provided in 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 Every Website Purpose: If your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you want to add to your site and leave out all other irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and covers you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WP backend.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your business details into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate the information from your User Profile fields in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available to WordPress 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 can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily customize and delete the compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you manage 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 Screen: 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” screen, lists all of your compliance disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that customers have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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
Here are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish content for adults only on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchasing price.
Software Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for the Compliance Bar Plugin product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the software developer when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: 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 of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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