One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a 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 not only puts you at risk of incurring financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your web presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of other advertising or merchant networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could also end up facing 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 digital properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing in your website, and
- There are cost-effective solutions for WordPress users that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Ready To Use In No Time
Compliance Bar installs just like any other plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Editable Templates
Easily edit the prebuilt compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated team to assist users with anything they need.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Website Purposes: As long as your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in very little time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based 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 visitors and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, you will then get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically insert the information you have input into your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates available:
- 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 compliance pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can edit and delete the legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the 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 offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular WordPress 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 normal “static” 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
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 interval, and store 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 you do business 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 customize 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 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” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback customers have published about 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)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are a few extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content for adult viewers 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 a dedicated team to assist users. You also get access to an entire set 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 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the purchase price.
Plugin Pricing
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Can be installed on multiple of your own sites. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing above was correct at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller 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 Compliance Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Pages 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 highly 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 of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, 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 to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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