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 internet presence needs to comply with numerous laws, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your web presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into a number of other advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not compliant, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business could become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain 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 maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your WordPress-based online business.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-powered sites containing over 20 customizable legal page templates for your digital business …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any regular plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
You can easily modify the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to assist users if they experience any difficulties.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized 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 available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the legal page templates provided with 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 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 that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that you don’t need.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many great features to site owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance templates made 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 website or blog quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily customize and delete your legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, 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 compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create several customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The 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” area …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Screenshot 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” area, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are just a few of the testimonials plugin customers have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content for adult viewers on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you. You also get access to video training.
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 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchasing price.
Plugin Pricing
- Single Site Licensing – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Can be installed on multiple sites that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this content was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the plugin 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 – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that 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 fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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