One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your digital presence must comply with numerous laws, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial costs, but also 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 review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into many other advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you are not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services 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 article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws 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 promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the solution that we review in this post.
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in terms of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress sites that contains over twenty customizable legal templates for your online presence …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your administrator area and activate.
Easily Editable Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit the pre-built compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist users if they experience any problems.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal page templates provided in 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 Any Website Purpose: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to site owners. Here are just some of these features:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, you will then get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the plugin’s compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin last time we checked their 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 is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons are customizable. 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can edit and delete the legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages to include an icon for 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress theme frameworks (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” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device 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 displays links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area 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 more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and store 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 Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Image sourced from 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 legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are just a few of the testimonials and feedback that users have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” 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
Here are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End 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 access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help users. You also get access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice your cost of purchasing.
Software Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on multiple of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this content was written. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 the law wherever your business is based.
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