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 must comply with many laws, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial costs, but also the cost to 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 inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into a number of other advertising or merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business,
- 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 easy-to-install solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your website …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin login and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
Easily modify the default compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to help users if they experience any issues.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where you can input your business information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information entered into your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal templates available, addressing all areas of compliance:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website or blog can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily customize and delete your compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image source: 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. compliance 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, icon 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: 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 different uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (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” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile 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 displays links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are 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 …
Compliance Bar lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(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 legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their 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
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback customers have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
***
”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to assist users if they experience any issues. Plugin users also have access to a complete 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), the plugin developers will refund double your cost of purchasing.
Plugin Pricing
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all sites that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing the Compliance Bar product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this article was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the plugin author when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Compliance Bar
Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert 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 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, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. You must 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.
***