One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking a law or regulation.
Your digital presence must comply with many federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not be aware of.
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 article, we look at 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 business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into a range of other advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and guidelines, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
In this article, we review a complete compliance & disclaimer plugin for your WordPress-based digital business.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin account and activate.
Easily Editable Compliance Page Templates
Easily modify the pre-built compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to assist you if you experience any problems.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: As long as your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the templates you need to include in your site and ignore any unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many unique features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area is added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked their site:
- 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 compliance pages for your blog or website quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – 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 built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete your compliance pages in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing your 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. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set a cookie duration 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar 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” area …
(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” screen, lists all of your compliance disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and comments plugin customers have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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
Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to help users. You also have access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 hrs (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all of your own sites. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing information here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get 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 The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
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 wherever your business is based.
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