One of the worst things that can happen to 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 puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a fundamental part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into many other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if your website is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business could be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
If your website lacks in areas of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress users that you will probably be very interested in using.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin section and activate.
Editable Templates
Easily modify the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide a dedicated support team to assist users with anything they need.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance 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 complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and ignore the irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and protects your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP addresses of your visitors for future 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 to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, you will get access to various settings.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information you have entered into your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website or blog can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
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 an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete your legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your compliance templates 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, 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 using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, 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” screen …
(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” section, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are just some testimonials and feedback that users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Here are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content for adult readers on your website, 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 plugin support team to help users. Users also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund 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), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Price
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a 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 of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer 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 websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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