One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website or blog has to comply with a wide range of laws and regulations, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial loss, but also the loss of 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 WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into various other advertising and merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could also 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, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
If your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly compliant:
Ready To Use In No Time
Compliance Bar installs like any plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily modify the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users.
Additional benefits of using the plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance 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 complicated to use and a full 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 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: As long as your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar 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.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will then 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 categories in this area where you can enter your business information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of your compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the website:
- 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
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your site simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons can be changed. 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 Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily edit and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically 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 using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of 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 period, and 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 you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws …
Compliance Bar 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 – 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” section, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials plugin customers have published about Compliance Bar:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to help you with anything you need. Plugin users also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition 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 your cost of purchasing.
Plugin Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for this product depends 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 not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal 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 for your own peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. 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 here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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