One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with a wide range of laws and regulations, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious 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 post, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into many other advertising or merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if your business online is not compliant, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous 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 be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this article.
If your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress websites that you may be very interested in knowing more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily edit the default compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to assist you with anything you need.
Additional benefits and advantages 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 - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: As long as your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. 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 those that are not required.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many great features to web site owners. Here are just some of these features:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are 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 notifying your visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Record And Store 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 otherwise.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that 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 – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, users will then have access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business details can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate the information entered into your User Profile inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your site simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page 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 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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can customize and delete the compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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. 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, 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, 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 will display links to your compliance pages through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to 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 source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses in different sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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 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” screen, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials and feedback that customers have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
***
“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website contains content that is considered inappropriate for underaged viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you. Users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the cost of purchasing.
Plugin Cost
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on 1 domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $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 part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the pricing when this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software developer when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing information: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. 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 ”how to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. 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 Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 in your country or region.
***