One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website or blog must comply with a number of laws and regulations, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial loss, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic online users.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
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,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
If your website or blog is lacking in aspects of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin that you will probably be very interested in knowing more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your website …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Compliance Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the default compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated plugin support team to help you.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full 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 legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For Every Website Purpose: As long as your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and leave out all other irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU 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 that notifies your users and covers your business from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the 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 – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once the plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of template pages 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 legal pages for your site simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can customize and delete the legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal templates 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device 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 legal using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create several customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses in other sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and even record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
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” section …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Screenshot 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” screen, lists all of your compliance disclaimers 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 receiving plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and comments customers have submitted for Compliance Bar:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are a few additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users if they experience any difficulties. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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 purchasing price.
Plugin Price
- Single User Personal License – Can be installed on one of your own sites. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own domains as you need. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the product 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
Additional Information
Templates Reviewed 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 strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. 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 – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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