One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your website must comply with many laws and regulations, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial loss, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, 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 with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut 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 range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulations, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining 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 solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a total compliance and disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based digital presence.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your administrator login and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily modify the prebuilt compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help users with anything they need.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- 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 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 All Website Purposes: As long as your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and leave out the irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU 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 plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate templates 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 – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the plugin is installed, the plugin’s “Settings” section will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your business details into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates available, covering all aspects of compliance:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily customize and delete your legal disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the legal pages 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
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting which pages should be included in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home 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 “regular” 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 legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, 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 you do business in the EU 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 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” tab …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” section, lists all of your compliance 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 getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials that users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
***
”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Plugin Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish adult content 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
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help you. You also get access to an entire set 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 hrs (Monday to Friday), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own domains as you like. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of the Compliance Bar product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the plugin 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 – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
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 complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. 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 in your country or region.
***