One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to break the law.
Your website or blog has to comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant 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 solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into most leading advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the 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 are offering or endorsing on your website, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your website become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in terms of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …
To learn more about this plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin area and activate.
Editable Page Templates
You can easily modify the built-in legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to help you with anything you need.
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 difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use In All Niches: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any pages that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your website publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, users get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we 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 easily create compliance pages for your blog or website simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can modify and delete your compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing 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. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (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 normal “static” WordPress 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 dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses in other sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 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 …
Compliance Bar lets you manage 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” section, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials From Customers
Below are some of the testimonials that customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 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)
Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include adult content 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 dedicated support to assist users. You also get access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy 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.
Plugin Cost
- Single – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing shown above was current when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how-to” videos showing plugin usage, 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 websites and blogs. We recommend 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 – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 all legal requirements in your country or region.
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