One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your internet presence must comply with various laws, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into a number of leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could end up facing a number 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 guidelines, it may impact on your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website is lacking in areas of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs you should know more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-use WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable legal disclaimers for your website …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any WP plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your administrator login and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
Easily make changes to the prebuilt compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to help you if you experience any difficulties.
Some additional benefits of this plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Use In Every Country: 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 wherever your business is located.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: If your site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that are unnecessary.
Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your website’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 be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Records And 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 they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that automatically 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).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, users will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your business information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information you have entered into your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates made available:
- 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 legal pages for your website or blog quickly and easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside 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 additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete your compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your compliance 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. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, icon 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (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 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 legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The plugin 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” tab …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Image 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” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are some of the testimonials that customers have written about Compliance Bar:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
***
”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Here are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to help you if you experience any problems. Users also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double your cost of purchasing.
Plugin Pricing
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on 1 domain that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The price of the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software author when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing information: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, 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-driven sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
***
