One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s important 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 aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your apps, and you won’t be allowed into many other advertising and merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could face a multitude 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 web properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business may become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to remain 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 inexpensive plugins for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your WordPress-based online presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable compliance page templates for your website …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Compliance Page Templates
Easily edit the default compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized 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 available.
- Use In Every Country: 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 For All Website Purposes: As long as your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that require 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and covers your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will get access to a number of sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically insert and display the information entered into your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the website:
- 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 website or blog quickly and easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can edit and delete your legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical WordPress page …
(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. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 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 icons …
PopUps
If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create several Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, 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 your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws …
Compliance Bar lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar has a non-intrusive way of notifying your visitors and covering you from non-compliance.
Page Templates
The “Page Templates” tab, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are just a few of the testimonials that plugin customers have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is inappropriate for minors on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist users if they experience any problems. Plugin users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version 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 the amount of your cost of purchase.
Product Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on multiple domains that you own. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing at the time this content was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the product seller when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, 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. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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