One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious 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-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is an essential component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into many leading advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not in compliance, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state and local laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in terms of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable legal pages for your website …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar installs like every WP plugin. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Editable Page Templates
Easily modify the prebuilt templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to assist users with anything they need.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is available if you need help.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal page templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For Every Website Purpose: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and ignore any irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If your site contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, 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 users and covers your business from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once you have installed the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area will be added to your WP admin area.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can input your business information into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of your compliance page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last checked the site:
- 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 compliance pages for your website is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can modify and delete your legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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 various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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 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 throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 device screens, 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 a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and even record 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 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 Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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” area, lists all of your legal disclaimers 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 receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Below are just some testimonials and comments customers have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin 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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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is considered inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your website, 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 users if they experience any problems. Plugin users also have access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy 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 double the amount of your purchase price.
Software Pricing
- Single Site Personal License – Install the plugin on 1 domain that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own domains as you need. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, 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 and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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