One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.
Your website or blog must comply with a wide range of federal, state and even local laws, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
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 good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your web 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 websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to remain compliant 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 for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple WordPress plugin that provides a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress sites that contains over 20 customizable legal disclaimer templates for your digital presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP admin login and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the built-in legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated support to help users if they experience any issues.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the templates provided with Compliance Bar 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 site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that are not necessary.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to WP users. Below we have listed just some of those:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – The plugin will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, users will then get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information you have input into your User Profile fields inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal pages available to WordPress users:
- 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
You can easily create legal pages for your website or blog by simply selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can customize and delete the compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from 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
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular 3rd-party themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration 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 the EU 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 lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU User 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 page 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 receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that users have submitted for 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)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways you can 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.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content for adult readers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist you. Users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version 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 Pricing
- Single User Licensing – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing above was correct when this content was published. This may not be the actual price charged by the software developer when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. 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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