One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence is an integral component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into many leading advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if your business online is not in compliance, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using in your website, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
In this article, you will learn about a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable legal pages for your online presence …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin user section and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
Easily modify the pre-built legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to help you.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided if you need assistance.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal page templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use In All Niches: If your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and ignore the unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick 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 on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business details can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information from your User Profile fields into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image 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” section includes a list of all of the plugin’s compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create compliance pages for your website or blog simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image 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 is installed with a default set of 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 Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily edit and delete the legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying which pages should be included in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your front 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 more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: 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 must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The 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” 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” section, lists all of your legal pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access 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 that plugin customers have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Here are a few extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website contains content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to assist users if they experience any problems. You also have access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 business hours (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own domains as you want. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin seller when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support 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 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 Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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