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 the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with a wide range of laws, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a fundamental part 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 statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into various advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could also face 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 digital properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that 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 many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing on your website, and
- There are plugins for WordPress website owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable legal pages for your online presence …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your administrator area and activate.
Editable Templates
Easily modify the prebuilt compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
The plugin develop provides dedicated plugin support to help you if you experience any issues.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you need to include in your site and ignore unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to web site owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to 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 protects your site from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for 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 automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section gets added to your WP admin area.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your business details into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from 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” screen lists all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal pages available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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
You can easily create legal pages for your site by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can modify and delete the compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the legal templates 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 many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular premium themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’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 displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display 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 source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar lets you manage 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 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 legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback customers have written about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing 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.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to help you. You also have access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos showing how the software works, including help documentation 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 installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. 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.
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