One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break 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 not only puts you at risk of suffering financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is an integral component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web 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, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into a range of advertising or merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain 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 remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your website …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In No Time
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator account and activate.
Editable Compliance Page Templates
Easily modify the prebuilt templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated support to help you if you experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar 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 and a full 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 make sure that the legal 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 For All Website Purposes: As long as your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that are irrelevant.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many unique features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If your site contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU 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 that notifies your users and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section is added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your business information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of your compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal pages available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your website or blog simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can edit and delete the legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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 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 a range of uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal 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 the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up 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 are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
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” section …
(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 compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin customers have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are a few useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content that is deemed inappropriate for minors 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 assist users if they experience any issues. You also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your cost of purchasing.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on multiple of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information: Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed 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 highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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