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 must comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a fundamental part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of other advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using on your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
If you suspect that your website falls short in aspects of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven websites containing over 20 customizable legal disclaimers for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
Easily make changes to the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated team to assist you.
Additional benefits of using the plugin include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Niches: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are not required.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Content – If your site includes content that may 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 or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your website from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, you will have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically insert the information from your User Profile into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of your compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of legal 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your site quite easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of 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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete your legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the legal templates 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 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 displays links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, 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” tab gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other 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 appearing again within a specific time interval, and 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 visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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 Section: Manage Settings – Screenshot 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” area, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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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)
Plugin Tips
Here are a few extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to help users if they experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single User Personal License – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The price of the Compliance Bar Plugin product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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