One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your digital presence must comply with numerous laws, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is a fundamental part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning 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 may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into most leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress-powered websites containing over 20 customizable compliance disclaimers for your website …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Easy And Quick To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP administrator area and activate.
Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the pre-built compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The 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 and a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal 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 site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and leave out unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Content – If your website has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe 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 visitors and protects you from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area will be added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your business details into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information from your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily create legal pages for your website or blog by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: 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 default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can edit and delete the compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image source: 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. compliance pages created before you installed 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, 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (like 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” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your legal through a visually attractive 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 you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The 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” area …
(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” section, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials From Users
Here are some of the testimonials and feedback that plugin users have published about 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)
Plugin Tips
Here are some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist users. You also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition 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 twice the amount of your cost of purchasing.
Software Price
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The price of this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product is selling for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin 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 – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get This 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.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. 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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