One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious 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 cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into most other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if your online presence is not compliant, visitors could 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!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
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 or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users that contains over 20 customizable legal pages for your online business …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every plugin. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin login and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
You can easily modify the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated support team to help users if they experience any issues.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: 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 - a full library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal page templates provided in 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 website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you need to add to your site and leave out the unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to web site owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP backend.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of your compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal 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
Creating compliance pages for your website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside 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 …
Icons are customizable. 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: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete your legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image 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. legal 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 home 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 display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and record 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 visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
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” tab …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit 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 update notifications …
Testimonials From Customers
Below are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have submitted for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
***
”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to help you. Users also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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 (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your cost of purchasing.
Software Price
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software author when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here: 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 legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: 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 is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
***