One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking a law or regulation.
Your website must comply with a whole set of laws, many of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into a number of advertising and merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, 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 digital presence is not compliant, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations 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 online, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this article.
If you suspect that your website falls short in aspects of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites that you should know more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin that includes over 20 customizable legal disclaimer templates for your site …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin section and activate.
Editable Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the pre-built legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any issues.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- 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 legal templates provided with the plugin 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 or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the compliance pages you need to add to your site and ignore the irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many great features to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to publish 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 terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your site from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will then have access to a number of sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically insert and display the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of your compliance page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance pages available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- About Us
- AdSense Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreements
- Affiliate Disclosure
- 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 compliance pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – 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 default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
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: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete your compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from 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 settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon 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, etc. …
(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 in other sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular 3rd-party theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings 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 displays links to your legal using 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. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and 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 – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, 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 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 …
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” 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” section, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments plugin users have written about Compliance Bar:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes content that is considered inappropriate for minors, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to help you with anything you need. You also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the cost of purchase.
Software Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for the Compliance Bar software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software developer when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Templates Approved 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 highly recommend that you get legal 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, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. 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 Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that 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 of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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