One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website or blog needs to comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of other advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If you are not compliant, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and guidelines, trust and confidence in your business could be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
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 and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using online, and
- There are cost-effective plugins for WordPress website owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
If you suspect that your website is lacking in areas of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin you may be very interested in knowing more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal disclaimer templates for your online presence …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin user area and activate.
Easy To Edit Compliance Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Legal Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default 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: If your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are unnecessary.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section gets added to your WP backend.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from 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) data has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance pages available to WordPress users:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page 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 attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons are customizable. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily customize and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(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. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying which pages should be included 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, etc. …
(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 different uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular 3rd-party themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress 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 will display links to your compliance pages 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 icons …
PopUps
If your website includes content that may 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 terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
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” area …
(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” tab, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Customers
Here are just a few of the testimonials plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Below are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes adult content, 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 a dedicated team to help users with anything they need. Users also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the purchasing price.
Product Licensing Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you need. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the amounts shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product developer when you visit the plugin site 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
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For demo videos showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. 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 – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 wherever your business is based.
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