One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website or blog must comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and 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 review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into a number of other advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, if you are not compliant, trust and confidence in your business could seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal 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 certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this article.
If your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, below we review a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs like any regular plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily modify the built-in compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to assist users.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is available if users need assistance.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default 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 In All Niches: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any pages that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, users get access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert and display the information into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of templates made available by the plugin last time we checked their site:
- 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
You can easily and quickly create compliance pages for your website or blog by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons are customizable. 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: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can edit and delete the legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides 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, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme (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 normal “static” WordPress 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU 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 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” section …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” tab, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Below are some of the testimonials plugin customers have provided for Compliance Bar 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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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content for adults only on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to assist you. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single User Personal License – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price when this content was published. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin seller when you visit the 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
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing how the plugin works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
In Conclusion
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 more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. You must 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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