One of the worst situations 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 intended 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 cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into various advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulations, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If you suspect that your website falls short in aspects of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress users you will probably be very interested in using.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal disclaimer templates for your online presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Quick Installation
Compliance Bar installs just like any WP plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin section and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the built-in legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users if they experience any issues.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative 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.
- Use For All Niches: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that are irrelevant.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar 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).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section will be added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available to plugin users:
- 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 or blog is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to 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 additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete your compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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 offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to be featured …
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 blocks access to users who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying 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 Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU 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 …
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” section …
(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 legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials plugin customers have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content that is inappropriate for minors 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 dedicated support to assist you if you experience any difficulties. Users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Price
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you need. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product seller 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 the latest pricing information here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For demo videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, 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 to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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