One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial loss, 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 review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, 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 digital presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into various leading advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business 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 you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If your website is falling short in areas of compliance, we review below a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Use In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any regular plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the prebuilt compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to help you with anything you need.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in legal 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 On All WordPress Sites: 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 that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are not necessary.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to website owners. Here are just some of those:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is 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 displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
Once the plugin is installed, users will then get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically populate and display the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked their 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your site quickly and easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from 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 additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can modify and delete your legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing 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, 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the 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 specifically configured through the theme settings 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 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 your compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of 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 various uses in other areas of your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin 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 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” screen, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials From Plugin Users
Below are some of the testimonials plugin customers have written about Compliance Bar:
”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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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are a few useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes content that is considered 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 a dedicated support team to help you with anything you need. Plugin users also have access to complete 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 hrs (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Price
- Single Site Licensing – Install the plugin on a single site that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price above was correct at the time this content was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the software seller 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 current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Our Recommendation
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 complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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