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 having broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring 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 article, we review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, 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 freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into a range of other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your web properties comply with legal requirements and regulations, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services 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 this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are cost-effective solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this article.
If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, below we review a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven sites that contains over twenty customizable compliance templates for your online presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Fast Installation
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Templates
Easily modify the pre-built compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help users if they experience any issues.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is provided if you need assistance.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the legal page templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: As long as your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the compliance pages you want to include in your site and ignore the unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – 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 they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically 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 – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can enter your business information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates available, covering all areas of compliance:
- 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 site is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can modify and delete your legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your compliance pages 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
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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 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 more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific premium theme (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device 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 displays links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and 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 your business is 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 …
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” tab …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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 legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials From Users
Here are some of the testimonials that users have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site published content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any problems. You also have access to full video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the purchasing price.
Software Pricing
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on all of your own sites. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the product 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 details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a 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 a demo video of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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