One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, some of which you are probably not even 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 inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a fundamental part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into many other advertising or merchant networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could also end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business may be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are cost-effective solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
If your website or blog falls short in aspects of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin that you will probably be interested in knowing more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Set Up. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily edit the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- 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 - a full library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in 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.
- Use For All Website Purposes: As long as your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you need to include in your site and leave out any irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, users have access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business details can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically insert and display the information from your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the plugin’s page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin when we last checked their website:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your site quickly and easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot 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 built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. 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: Legal Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can modify and delete your legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages to include an icon for 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically 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 will display links to your compliance pages using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display 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 do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to 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 Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(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 disclaimer templates 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 receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are just a few of the testimonials and feedback that plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin 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)
Plugin Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish content that is inappropriate for minors 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 assist users with anything they need. Plugin users also have access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund 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 amount of the purchasing price.
Plugin Cost
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on a single domain that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on multiple sites that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. 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 Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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