One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with many laws, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses, but also the loss of 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 WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant part 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, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into a range of other advertising or merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not in compliance, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(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 offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for your WordPress-based website.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any plugin. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
Easily make changes to the pre-built legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to help users if they experience any issues.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For Any Website Purpose: If your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that are not necessary.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates made available:
- 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
You can easily create legal pages for your site simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can modify and delete your compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing 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. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various 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 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 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 displays links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is 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 …
Compliance Bar lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” tab …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Image sourced from 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 compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback customers have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help users with anything they need. Plugin users also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single Site Licensing – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Can be installed on all as many of your own domains as you like. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the site 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 Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. 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 Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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