One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
Your website or blog has to comply with a whole set of laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into a range of other advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic people or organizations.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: 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 certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws 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 are promoting or using on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this article.
If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, below we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
Easily edit the built-in legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to assist users with anything they need.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Niches: If your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the legal pages you need to include in your site and ignore the unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your site contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your 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 laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP admin area.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of your compliance page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the site:
- 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 create compliance pages for your site quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
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 an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can modify and delete your compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the compliance pages 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
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular 3rd-party theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas 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 period, and record 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 do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
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” tab …
(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” area, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials From Plugin Users
Below are some of the testimonials and comments that customers have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
”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
Here are a few useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content that is deemed inappropriate for minors on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users with anything they need. Plugin users also have access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund 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), the plugin developers will refund double your purchase price.
Product Cost
- Single – Can be installed on one domain that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you want. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The price of the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the pricing when this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and 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 – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our 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 in your country or region.
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