One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your digital presence must comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering 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 article, we look at a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal 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 may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into most leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your business online is not in compliance, it may affect 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 policies and guidelines!)
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 be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
If your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly compliant:
Quick Installation
Compliance Bar installs like any regular plugin. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify the pre-built compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated team to help you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Legal Page 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 and a complete library of training videos is provided if you need help.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you need to add to your site and ignore any irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of features to site owners. Below we have listed just some of those:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If your website publishes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – The plugin can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the plugin is installed, the plugin’s “Settings” section is added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate and display the information you have input into your User Profile fields inside your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance templates available:
- 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
You can create legal pages for your site quite easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page 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 default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily customize and delete your legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing your compliance pages 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
You have various 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front 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 settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress 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 will display 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 your compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If your website publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and record 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 the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you edit 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 Section: 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 disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Customers
Below are some of the testimonials customers have written about Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- 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 your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content that is inappropriate for persons below a certain age 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 support to help users. Users also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version 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.
Plugin Pricing
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin is being retailed for the amounts shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend 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 – WP Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. 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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