One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website must comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws, many 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 post, we review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into various advertising and merchant networks.
If your online business 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, without making it very clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your WordPress-based online presence.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin that includes over twenty customizable compliance templates for your online presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Use In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other WP plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
You can easily modify the built-in compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to help users if they experience any problems.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice 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 anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to 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 – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will get access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: 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 areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked their 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your site is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – 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 is installed with a built-in set of 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: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily customize and delete the compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your compliance templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (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 device screens, 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 using dynamic 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 your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and even record 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 are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments customers have written about Compliance Bar:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you have adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to assist users. You also have access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the cost of purchase.
Plugin Price
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users 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, 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 wherever your business is based.
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