One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and 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 solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into most leading advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could 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 compliant, trust and confidence in your business may be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many 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 are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your web site lacks in aspects of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin that you will probably be very interested in using.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress users containing over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your digital presence …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Use In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar installs just like every other plugin. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Editable Templates
Easily edit the built-in legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to help you.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you need to add to your site and leave out the irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to website owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’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 website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information you have entered into your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your website or blog can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily customize and delete the compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (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” 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 will display links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and store 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 visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User 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 legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials and comments plugin customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin 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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”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
Below are a few useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help users if they experience any problems. You also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hrs (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single User Personal License – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on multiple domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the product is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the plugin works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our 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 wherever your business is based.
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