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 needs to comply with a wide range of 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 serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and 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 website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on 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 site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, 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 on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be allowed into many leading advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your business online is not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business could be irrepairably.
(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 offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of 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 offering or endorsing online, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin you may be interested in using.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install plugin for WordPress-powered websites with over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your online presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
Easily edit the built-in compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to assist you.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: If your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. 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 those that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering you from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the plugin is installed, users have access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate and display the information inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive 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: Legal Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can edit and delete the legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: 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. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular premium themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, 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 legal using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If your site has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
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 store 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 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 Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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” screen, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Plugin Customers
Here are a few of the testimonials customers have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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 to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to help you with anything you need. Plugin users also have access to 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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchasing price.
Software Price
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was correct at the time this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have 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 demo videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. 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 Plugin – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, please note that 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 fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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