One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking the law.
Your website or blog must comply with a whole set of laws, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally 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, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be allowed into a range of leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are inexpensive plugins for WordPress site owners that can help your website become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based online business.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress administrator login and activate.
Editable Page Templates
Easily edit the default legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated support team to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits of this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available if users need help.
- 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 Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For Any Website Purpose: As long as your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are not necessary.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin can record the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you have access to various settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information entered into your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the plugin’s legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your website quite easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your legal templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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 Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is 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 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 legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration 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 do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you manage 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 – 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” section, lists all of your legal page templates 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 receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials that plugin customers have written about 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)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are a few additional 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.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you include content that is deemed inappropriate for minors 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
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to help users with anything they need. Plugin users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the purchasing price.
Product Pricing
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software developer when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. 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 installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, 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 to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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