One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be allowed into various leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your online presence 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, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in terms of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites you should know more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Easy And Quick To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin login and activate.
Easily Editable Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify the built-in legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is available if users need assistance.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided in Compliance Bar 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 runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to web site owners. Here are just some of those:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe 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 that notifies your visitors and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages 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 displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business details can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: 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 sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates available, addressing all areas 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
Creating legal pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily modify and delete the legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – 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. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to appear …
PopUps
If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab 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 in different sections of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and capture 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 visitors in the EU, 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 User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” area, lists all of your legal templates 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 getting plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that customers have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”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
Plugin Tips
Below are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you have adult content on your site, 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 plugin support to assist users with anything they need. Users also have access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your cost of purchase.
Product Pricing
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own sites. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Price details for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For demo videos showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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