One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your digital presence needs to comply with a number of federal, state and even local laws, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an essential component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into a range of other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-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 post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
If your web site lacks in terms of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Easy To Install
Compliance Bar installs just like every WP plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin area and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the pre-built compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: As long as your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and covers your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, users will have access to various settings.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business details can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete your compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages should be included 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 source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings 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 will display links to your legal through 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 your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize 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 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” section, lists all of your legal pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are just some testimonials plugin users 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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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Below are a few extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content for adult readers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist users if they experience any issues. You also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. 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 plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. 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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