One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your website or blog must comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, many 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 review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of leading advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could also end up facing a multitude 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 website complies with all legal requirements and regulations, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using on your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites you may be interested in knowing more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress-powered websites that includes over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your online presence …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs just like every WP plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your administrator account and activate.
Easy To Edit Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit the prebuilt compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to help users.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the legal pages you want to add to your site and leave out any irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU 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 website from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your blog or website quickly and easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily modify and delete your compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular WordPress theme frameworks (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” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 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 the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of 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 a range of uses in other sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and store 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 you are based in the EU 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 …
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” 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 legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments that customers have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes content for adult viewers, 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 you if you experience any issues. Plugin users also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double your cost of purchase.
Product License Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on one domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Install the plugin on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, 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 downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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