One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website or blog must comply with various federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant aspect of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into a number of other advertising and merchant networks.
If you are not compliant, you could also face a whole range 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 site complies with all legal requirements and guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a simple WordPress plugin that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …
More info: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Compliance Page Templates
Easily make changes to the default legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist users.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use For Every Website Purpose: If your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit 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 Plugin offers many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and covers your site from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will have access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically insert the information from your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance 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 site quickly and easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. 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 Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can modify and delete your compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot 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. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular premium themes (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 displays links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to be featured …
PopUps
If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and even record 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 must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” tab …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” tab, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are just some testimonials and feedback that customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are a few extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you if you experience any issues. Plugin users also have access to 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 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the cost of purchase.
Product Cost
- Single User Personal License – Install the plugin on one of your own sites. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing the Compliance Bar Plugin product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product sells for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price 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 Plugin For WordPress
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. 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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