One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses, but also the cost to 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 very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your web presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into various leading advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing on your website, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, we discuss below a simple WordPress plugin you will probably be interested in using.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress websites and blogs with over 20 customizable compliance pages for your digital presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Set Up. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Templates
Easily make changes to the built-in templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to help users.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a complete library of training videos is available if you need help.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default legal page 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 In All Niches: As long as your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and covers your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once you have installed the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” screen gets added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your business information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin last time we checked their website:
- 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 compliance pages for your website by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image 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 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete your legal disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your compliance templates 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, image 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display 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 display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and capture 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 Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
Compliance Bar 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” tab …
(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” area, lists all of your compliance disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Here are just a few of the testimonials that customers have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
***
“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection 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 purchase.
- If your site includes content that is deemed inappropriate for underaged viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to help users if they experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to full video training manuals.
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 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your purchasing price.
Product Price
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was published. This may or 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 purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos showing how the plugin works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. 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.
***