One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your digital presence is an essential component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into most advertising or merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you are not compliant, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state or 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 are promoting or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for your web presence.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress websites that contains over 20 customizable legal page templates for your web presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Really Easy To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your admin section and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the prebuilt legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For Any Website Purpose: As long as your website or blog is driven 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, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that are irrelevant.
Features
Compliance Bar provides a number of features to site owners. Here are just some of those:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will have access to various settings.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your business information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal pages available:
- 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 create legal pages for your website or blog quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete your legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- 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 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 device screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: 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 specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set cookie durations 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws …
Compliance Bar lets you manage 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 compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials From Plugin Customers
Below are some of the testimonials customers have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any difficulties. You also get access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Price
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the site 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 Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Plugin Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, 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 websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
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 wherever your business is based.
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