One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken a law or regulation.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your online presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into a range of advertising or merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, if your web presence is not compliant, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress sites with over twenty customizable compliance pages for your online presence …
To learn more about this plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any other WP plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP admin user account and activate.
Editable Page Templates
You can easily modify the prebuilt templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to help you.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire 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 default legal 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 Niches: As long as your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any pages that are unnecessary.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and covers your website from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will then have access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile in your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default 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: Compliance Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If your website publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based 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 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” screen …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” tab, lists all of your legal 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 getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments that plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” 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 – Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help you. Plugin users also have access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hrs (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Can be installed on all of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the product sells for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already 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 a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
In Conclusion
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 more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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