One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
Your internet presence must comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is an essential component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into a number of leading advertising or merchant 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 your digital presence is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your site become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
If your web site falls short in areas of compliance, below we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar installs like any regular WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin section and activate.
Easily Editable Legal Page Templates
Easily modify the built-in legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
Dedicated Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to help users.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the 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.
- Use In All Niches: If your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you need to include in your site and leave out the irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of great features to WP users. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your site from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once the plugin is installed, the plugin’s “Settings” section is added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your business details into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available:
- 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
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 ”Save” on the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: 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 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 Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site.
- 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 (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, 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 Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different areas of your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are 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 …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU 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 compliance disclaimer 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 receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials From Plugin Customers
Below are just a few of the testimonials that customers have provided for 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)
***
”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Plugin Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish content for adults only on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need. Users also get access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 twice your cost of purchase.
Plugin Price
- Single – Install the plugin on one of your own sites. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all domains that you own. Install the plugin 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. Presently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the product website 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
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
***