One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both 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 article, we look at a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an integral part 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 sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into a number of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic online users.
At the very least, if your online presence is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using in your website, 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 or blog is lacking in aspects of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users containing over 20 customizable compliance disclaimer templates for your website …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your web site instantly compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user login and activate.
Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the pre-built compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist you.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized 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 - a complete library of training videos is provided if you need help.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default 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.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you want to add to your site and ignore any unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many great features to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is 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 displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (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 the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area is added to your WP backend.
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 input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically insert the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s legal templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin last time we checked their site:
- 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
Creating compliance pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete your legal disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal 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 display 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (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 “regular” WordPress 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and record 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 do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
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” 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 disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are a couple of the testimonials plugin customers have submitted regarding 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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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Useful Tips
Here are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age, 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 team to assist users with anything they need. You also get access to full video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the purchasing price.
Product Cost
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for the product can vary, depending 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 not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal 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 installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven 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 Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that 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 all legal requirements in your country or region.
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