One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is an integral aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into various other advertising and merchant networks.
If you are not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous 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 remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your web site falls short in areas of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites that you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users containing over twenty customizable compliance disclaimers for your online presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Compliance Bar installs just like any plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user login and activate.
Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the pre-built compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to assist you.
Some additional benefits of this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the legal templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Website Purposes: As long as your site 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, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that are not necessary.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force 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 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 visitors and protects your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the plugin has been installed, users get access to various settings pages.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your business details into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image 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 screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked their site:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create compliance pages for your site by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image source: 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 built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can modify and delete the legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – 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 offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot 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 website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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, 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 displays links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your 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 a number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your site …
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 displaying again within a specific time period, and record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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” screen …
(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 legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that users have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are a few additional 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.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website contains content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need. Plugin users also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Price details for Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the pricing when this article was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly 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 showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, 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 is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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