One of the worst predicaments 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.
Your digital presence needs to comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial loss, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence is a significant component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into most other advertising or merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
If your web site falls short in aspects of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress users you will probably be very interested in knowing more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal disclaimer templates for your web presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
You can easily modify the default compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated plugin support team to help users if they experience any difficulties.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Niches: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you need to add to your site and ignore all other irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will then have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where you can enter your business details into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available, covering all aspects of compliance:
- 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 easily and quickly create legal pages for your website simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can customize and delete your compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from 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. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific premium theme (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 devices, 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 a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page 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 more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 source: 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 customize 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 Screen: Manage Settings – Image 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 pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are just a few of the testimonials that users 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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”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)
Plugin Tips
Here are a few useful ways to 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 site.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to help users with anything they need. You also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the cost of purchasing.
Plugin Cost
- Single User License – Install the plugin on a single site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you want. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing shown above was correct at the time this content 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 your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly 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, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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