One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into many leading advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if your business online is not compliant, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-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 could be subject to numerous 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 comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
If your website lacks in terms of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress sites that you will probably be very interested in using.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven sites containing over twenty customizable legal templates for your online presence …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Set Up. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user area and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
You can easily edit the default legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: As long as your site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you need to add to your site and ignore irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of great features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are 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 plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, users will then get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal page 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 and quickly create compliance pages for your website simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot 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 comes with a built-in 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 Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily customize and delete the legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the compliance templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates 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 position, whether to display 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of 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 (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 normal “static” WordPress 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms or 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 multiple customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover different uses in different sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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” section, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and feedback that users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Below are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site published content that is considered inappropriate for minors, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help users if they experience any problems. Users also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Pricing
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the product is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the plugin site 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
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support 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 websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: 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 of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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