One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to break the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal 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 may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into a range of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your online presence is not in compliance, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your business online is not compliant, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your web site is falling short in aspects of compliance, below we review a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
More info: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin login and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the pre-built compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to assist you.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For Any Website Purpose: As long as your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that you don’t need.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and covers you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, users get access to various settings.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can enter 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 Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically populate the information you have input into your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the plugin’s compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page templates made 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 blog or website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete the legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different 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 3rd-party theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 displays links to your compliance pages through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your website has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section 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 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
Compliance Bar 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” 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” screen, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to assist users with anything they need. Users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Licensing Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of the Compliance Bar product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the product is being retailed for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product 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
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. 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 – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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