One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break 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 suffering financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into a range of leading advertising and merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business could be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites that provides a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin section and activate.
Editable Templates
You can easily edit the default legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to help users.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal 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 complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided if you need help.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the legal templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: If your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your business from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once you have installed the plugin, you have access to a number of settings.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal page templates made 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 is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of 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 Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete the legal disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display 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 front 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 different uses in other sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (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 devices, 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 will display links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin lets you edit 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 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” area, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials that users have published about Compliance Bar:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are a few extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist you if you experience any problems. You also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Product Price
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on a single domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on all as many of your own domains as you need. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the plugin developer when you visit the product site 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 – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal 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 showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. 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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