One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website needs to comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring 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 article, we look at a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into most advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if your online presence 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 terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that 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 may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress users that you will probably be interested in using.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install WordPress plugin that contains over 20 customizable compliance disclaimer templates for your digital presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other plugin. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin area and activate.
Easy To Edit Legal Page Templates
Easily edit the pre-built templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin 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 - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default templates provided in 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: If your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that are not necessary.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the plugin has been installed, users will 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 area where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically populate the information from your User Profile inside your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: 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 areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of your legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the site:
- 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 create compliance pages for your blog or website simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default 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: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily customize and delete your legal disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from 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. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: 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 website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and capture 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin 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” screen …
(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” tab, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials that customers have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
***
”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site published content for adult viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need. You also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your cost of purchase.
Plugin Price
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for the Compliance Bar product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this article was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software 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 price: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin 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
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
***