One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken a law or regulation.
Your internet presence must comply with a wide range of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your web presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into most other advertising or merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with legal requirements and regulations, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this article.
In this article, we review a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based digital presence.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users containing over 20 customizable legal pages for your online business …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Set Up. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Editable Page Templates
Easily make changes to the built-in templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you.
Additional benefits of using the plugin include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Niches: As long as your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and ignore unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of those features:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. 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, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- 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 pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, the plugin’s “Settings” section gets added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information entered into your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance 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 create legal pages for your blog or website quite easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete the legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal templates 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 display links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages should be included in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your home 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 unlimited Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device 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 compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of 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 displaying again within a specific time interval, and record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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 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” area, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are a few of the testimonials plugin users have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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
Below are some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist you. Users also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hours (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on multiple sites that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or 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 special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product developer when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get 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.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. 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 in your country or region.
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