One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website or blog has to comply with various laws and regulations, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising and merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence in doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that 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 may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress users that can help your site become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
If your website falls short in terms of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress sites that you may be interested in using.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily make changes to the pre-built compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to assist you if you experience any issues.
Some additional benefits of this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if 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.
- Can Be Used For Every Website Purpose: If your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and leave out the unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
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 sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Company Phone Number,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked their website:
- About Us
- AdSense Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreements
- Affiliate Disclosure Statement
- 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 create legal pages for your site quickly and easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance 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 …
Icons are customizable. 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: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily modify and delete your legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the compliance 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
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of 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 a specific 3rd-party theme framework (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 “regular” 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 compliance pages using a visually attractive 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 site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to users who do not 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 in different sections of your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and even record 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 are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The plugin lets you manage 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 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” tab, 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 receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have provided for the 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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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to help users if they experience any problems. Users also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund 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 double the cost of purchasing.
Product Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single domain that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of the Compliance Bar Plugin software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price above was current at the time this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal 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 helpdesk, 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-driven websites and blogs. 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 – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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