One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website or blog has to comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial losses, but also 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 inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your web presence is an essential component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if your online business is not in compliance, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations 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 are promoting or using in your website, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your site become more compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
If your web site lacks in terms of compliance, there is a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily modify the default legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the legal 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 site is driven by 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 all other unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some of those:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, the plugin’s “Settings” screen is added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information from your User Profile inside your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of templates made available by the plugin when we last checked the site:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily edit and delete your compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers 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 site, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically 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 legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, 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 make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar 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” 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 disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that customers have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar Plugin 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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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content that is deemed 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.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to help you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your purchase price.
Software Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing above was current at the time this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional 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 installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, 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-powered websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Note: 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 of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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