One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break 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 serious financial loss, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, visitors may 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!)
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 a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this article.
If your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress sites that you will probably be very interested in knowing more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress sites containing over twenty customizable compliance disclaimers for your online presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any regular WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Legal Page Templates
Easily make changes to the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any issues.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The plugin 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 full library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that are unnecessary.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is 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 business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section gets added to your WP backend.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert the information you have input into your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal page templates available to plugin users:
- 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
You can create legal pages for your site quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – 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 attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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: Compliance Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can edit and delete the legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 configured 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 feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe 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 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 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 legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin customers have provided for 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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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes content that is deemed inappropriate for minors, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to help you. You also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 business hours (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Pricing
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Can be installed on multiple sites that you own. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing above was correct when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software developer when you visit the plugin website 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 Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. 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 showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. 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 – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our 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 all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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