One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into a range of leading advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could face a number 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 site complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no 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 federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using in your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs you should know more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your administrator section and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily modify the pre-built legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the visual editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist users with anything they need.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Legal Templates: The 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 and a complete library of training videos is provided.
- 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 legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: As long as your site 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, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that you don’t need.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to website owners. Here are just some of those:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and covers your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, users have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate the information you have entered into your User Profile into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of templates 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 blog or website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: 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 attractive 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can edit and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Screenshot 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting which pages should be included 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular 3rd-party themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 compliance pages 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 appear …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas of your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you edit 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 – 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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Plugin Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback users have published about Compliance Bar:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains content that is deemed inappropriate for minors, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to assist you if you experience any problems. Users also get access to full 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 business hours (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of 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 review was published. This may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, 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 installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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