One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply 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 losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces 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 could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be allowed into various leading advertising or merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, if your online business is not in compliance, visitors may 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: Please note that 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 certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws 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 may be offering or using online, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
If your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin that includes over 20 customizable compliance disclaimers for your web presence …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin user account and activate.
Editable Legal Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to help users.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal page 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 Any Website Purpose: If your website is powered 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, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and protects your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, users will have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal page templates available to WordPress users:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily create legal pages for your blog or website by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
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 additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can edit and delete your compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides 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 front 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 several Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 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 icons …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses in different sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, 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 your business is based in the EU 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 …
Compliance Bar 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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback that users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar Plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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 – Useful Tips
Here 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 on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to help you if you experience any issues. Plugin users also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on one of your own sites. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software retails for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product seller when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have 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 for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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