One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your online presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into many leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a multitude 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 site complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, it may impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
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 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 may be promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin 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 presence.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs containing over twenty customizable legal templates for your online business …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Easy, Fast & Simple To Install
Compliance Bar installs like any other plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP administrator login and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Legal Page Templates
Easily edit the prebuilt legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated support team to assist users with anything they need.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is available if users need help.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: As long as your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that are not required.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your website has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone 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, (even in the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically populate and display the information you have input into your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: 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 plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the plugin’s page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website or blog can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image 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 is installed with a default 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: Compliance Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can edit and delete the legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: 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. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from 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 site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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, 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 a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen 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 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 as soon as visitors arrive, 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 you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
The plugin lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User 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” area, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are just a few of the testimonials and comments that plugin users have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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)
Useful Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is deemed inappropriate for minors on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to help users. Plugin users also have access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 hrs (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single Site Licensing – Install the plugin on a single domain that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Install the plugin on multiple of your own domains. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was correct when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details here: Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert 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 peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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