One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your digital presence needs to comply with a wide range of laws and regulations, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring 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 look at a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into a range of other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your web properties comply with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using on your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
If you suspect that your web site falls short in terms of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs you should know more about.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable compliance disclaimers for your online presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Compliance Bar installs like every plugin. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Templates
Easily make changes to the prebuilt legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you if you experience any difficulties.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- 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 legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar 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 website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the pages you want to include in your site and leave out all other irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to web site owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, users get access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile in your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance templates available to plugin users:
- 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 create compliance pages for your blog or website quickly and easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to 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 …
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 Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete the legal disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying which pages to include an icon for in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular WordPress theme frameworks (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 device screens, 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 displays links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
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” area …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” tab, lists all of your compliance page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are just a few of the testimonials and comments that plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are a few useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers 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.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to an entire set 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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the cost of purchasing.
Plugin Cost
- Single Site Licensing – Install the plugin on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you like. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar Plugin product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product sells for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. 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 – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. 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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