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 a law or regulation.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both 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 post, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your digital presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into various other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this article.
If you suspect that your web site falls short in aspects of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your website …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs just like every plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin user area and activate.
Editable Templates
You can easily edit the built-in legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any problems.
Some additional benefits of this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in templates provided with 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: If your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that you don’t need.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User 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 users and covers you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once the plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information in your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: 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” section lists all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the 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
Creating legal pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – 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 default 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete your legal disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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 many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you 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 “regular” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar 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” tab …
(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” screen, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials customers have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Here are a few useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes content that is inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you. You also have access to full 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), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Pricing
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered 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: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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