One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with a number of federal, state and even local laws, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the loss of 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 cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of leading advertising or merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress website owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
If your web site lacks in areas of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites that you will probably be interested in using.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable legal pages for your digital presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP administrator section and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Compliance Page Templates
Easily modify the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For Every Website Purpose: If your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that are not required.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to use in no time.
- Show Attractive Icons – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups 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 visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will then have access to various settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate and display the information in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal pages available to WordPress users:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your blog or website quickly and easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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: Legal Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily customize and delete your legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and store 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 the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
Compliance Bar lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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” area, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are just a few of the testimonials that customers have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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)
Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist you. You also get access to video training manuals.
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 business hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Product Pricing
- Single Site Licensing – Install the plugin on one of your own sites. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own domains as you need. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software retails for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the product seller when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page 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 for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. 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 Website Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, please note that 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 of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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