One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence is an integral component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (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 will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into many other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that 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 numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site compliant:
Fast & Easy Installation
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator login and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the prebuilt legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to assist you if you experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use For Every Website Purpose: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that you don’t need.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can input your business details into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information entered into your User Profile into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of 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: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete your compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. 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, icon 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 more …
(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 different uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays 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 your compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business 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 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” area …
(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” section, lists all of your legal pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Below are some additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you have adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users. Users also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice your purchase price.
Plugin Pricing
- Single User Personal License – Install the plugin on 1 site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Pages Reviewed 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 advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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