One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your internet presence must comply with many laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into a range of other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your digital presence 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 compliant, trust and confidence in your business may be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local 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 offering or using in your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based online business.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin section and activate.
Easy To Edit Compliance Page Templates
Easily make changes to the built-in compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to assist you if you experience any issues.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you want to include in your site and ignore unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to use in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and covers your website from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, you will then have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance templates available to plugin users:
- 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
Creating compliance pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
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 an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily edit and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing your compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many 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 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 display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile 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 displays links to your compliance pages through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU 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 lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” tab, 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 getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that customers have written about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Here are some useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you include content for adult readers on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to assist you with anything you need. Users also get access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the purchase price.
Product Pricing
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on a single domain that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on all as many of your own domains as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this content was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software seller when you visit the product 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
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 all legal requirements in your country or region.
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