One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your digital presence must comply with a number of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your web presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you won’t be allowed into most other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress users that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this article.
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every plugin. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
Easily make changes to the built-in legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated support team to assist users.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the legal page 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 On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website is driven by 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 that are not required.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, you get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page templates made available:
- 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
You can create legal pages for your blog or website quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete your compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the compliance templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have 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 to include an icon for in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 devices, 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 will display links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, 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 Screen: 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 make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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 modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are just a few of the testimonials users have provided for 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:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you include content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers on your website, 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. Plugin users also get access to complete video training.
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 (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the purchase price.
Product Cost
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on all as many of your own domains as you want. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer 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 pricing here: Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. 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 – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. 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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