One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website has to comply with a whole set of laws and regulations, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an integral aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as 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 will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into a range of advertising and merchant networks.
If you are not in compliance, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you are not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may 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 on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple WordPress plugin that provides a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your website.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable compliance disclaimers for your website …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs just like any other plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
Easily make changes to the built-in legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the 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 On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the legal pages you need to add to your site and leave out the unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, 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 visitors and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, you get access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your business information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full 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
You can create compliance pages for your website quickly and easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons are customizable. 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: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete your compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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
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, icon size, selecting 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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, 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 will display links to your legal using dynamic 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 show 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 visitors who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin lets you customize 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 edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments customers have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you include adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you with anything you need. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back 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), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single User Licensing – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was correct when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the product seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download This 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, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
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 to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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