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 breaking the law.
Your website or blog needs to comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into most other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic people or organizations.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing future business with you.
(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 various legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your WordPress-based digital presence.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly compliant:
Really Easy To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users with anything they need.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: 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 difficult to use - a full library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal page templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate 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 and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, you will then get 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 categories in this section where you can input your business details into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the website:
- 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 site can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress 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: Compliance Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete your compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the compliance pages 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 settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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 Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is 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 screens, 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 using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your site includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and even record 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 your business is based in the EU 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 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” area …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Image 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” section, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are just a few of the testimonials that users have written about Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are a few extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist you. Users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 hours (Monday to Friday), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single User Personal License – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on multiple of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software sells for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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