One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken a law or regulation.
Your website or blog has to comply with many laws, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your web presence is not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business may become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing in your website, and
- There are plugins for WordPress site owners that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your website or blog is lacking in aspects of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin you will probably be very interested in knowing more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website instantly compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs just like every other WP plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator area and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
You can easily edit the prebuilt legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided in 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: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you want to add to your site and ignore irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your legal 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 your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business 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 displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of template pages made available by the plugin when we last checked the site:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your website or blog can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can edit and delete the legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed 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, icon size, selecting 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (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” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages through 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 your website publishes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses in other 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 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 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 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” tab …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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 compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are just some testimonials and comments that plugin customers have written about the Compliance Bar plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”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 Plugin Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to assist you with anything you need. Users also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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.
Product Licensing Pricing
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Install the plugin on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Price details for Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the product is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin author when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly 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 help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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