One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website needs to comply with a wide range of federal, state and even local laws, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vitally 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 online presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into many advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your online presence is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are inexpensive plugins for WordPress users that can help your site become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over twenty customizable legal disclaimer templates for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user account and activate.
Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily modify the default legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any difficulties.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For Every Website Purpose: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you want to add to your site and leave out all other irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of great features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in no time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically insert the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the plugin’s legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your site by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot 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 default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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: Compliance Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the compliance templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates 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 where to position the bar, whether to show 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is 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, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of 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 appearing again within a specific time interval, 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 are based in the EU 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 lets you customize 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 – 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 legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin customers have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you include adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help you if you experience any difficulties. You also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 the purchase price.
Product Price
- Single – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on all of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar Plugin product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was published. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin developer 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 current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that 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 of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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