One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is an integral aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into most other advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your online business is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations 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 offering or endorsing online, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your website …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Installation Is Easy, Simple And Quick
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin user login and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
Easily modify the default legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
Dedicated Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to help users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal page templates provided with 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 Website Purposes: As long as your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that are not required.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides a number of features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your site has content that should 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 site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP address of your visitors 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 that populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your business details into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information you have input into your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the legal templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your website quite easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete the compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various 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 to include an icon for 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular 3rd-party theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically 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 dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout 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 interval, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The Compliance Bar 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” section …
(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” section, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials and feedback that users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Here are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the 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.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to help users with anything they need. Users also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% money-back 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 cost of purchasing.
Product Cost
- Single Site License – Install the plugin on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Install the plugin on all as many of your own domains as you need. Can be installed on any client site 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 price above was correct when this content was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this 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 wherever your business is based.
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