One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken 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 incurring significant financial costs, 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 review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into various other advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your web properties comply with legal requirements and guidelines, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: 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 numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state or local laws and regulations 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 offering or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
If your website or blog lacks in areas of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable compliance disclaimer templates for your digital presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated support team to help you with anything you need.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: The plugin creates 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 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 in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For Any Website Purpose: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the legal pages you want to include in your site and leave out irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to website owners. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s 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 compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects you from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store the IP address of your visitors 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 automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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
You can easily create legal pages for your blog or website by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can modify and delete your legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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
You have 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically 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 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 displays links to your legal through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, 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 source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in Europe 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 …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” section, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that customers have submitted for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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)
Useful Tips
Here are a few useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to assist you if you experience any problems. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the cost of purchasing.
Plugin Pricing
- Single Site Licensing – Can be installed on a single domain that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on multiple of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the 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
Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this 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 in your country or region.
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