One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to break the law.
Your website needs to comply with a wide range of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you may probably 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 your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential component of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into various other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, 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 in compliance, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations 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 may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this article.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress sites that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Easy Installation
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any regular plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin section and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
Easily edit the prebuilt compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help you if you experience any issues.
Some additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Legal Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is available if you need help.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: If your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that you don’t need.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your website contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to various settings.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information entered into your User Profile fields inside your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked their website:
- 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 easily create compliance pages for your website or blog simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from 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 …
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 Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily customize and delete the compliance pages in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages to include an icon for 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 Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: 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 Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you customize 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 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” screen, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar 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)
Useful Tips
Below are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content for adult readers 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 a dedicated team to help you. You also get access to video training manuals.
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 hours (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Price
- Single – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you need. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the price at the time this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website 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 Info
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 professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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