One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring 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 look at a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, 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 could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into a number of other advertising and merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with all legal requirements and guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business,
- The importance of being compliant 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 easy-to-install solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs that provides a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable compliance pages for your site …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly compliant:
Ready To Use In Minutes
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Editable Page Templates
Easily edit the built-in legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in legal page templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the compliance pages you want to include in your site and leave out irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of great features to site owners. Here are just some of those features:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, 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 visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, you get access to a number of settings.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can enter your business information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the website:
- 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 compliance pages for your website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – 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 built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can modify and delete the legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude 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 WordPress themes (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe 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 edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(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” area, lists all of your legal page 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 …
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback customers have written about Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you include content that is deemed inappropriate for minors on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to help users with anything they need. You also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the cost of purchase.
Product Cost
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all of your own sites. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details here: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. 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: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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