One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your digital presence needs to comply with many laws and regulations, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses, 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 post, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your 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 approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you won’t be allowed into a range of advertising or merchant networks.
You could 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 digital properties comply with legal requirements and guidelines, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(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 article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are cost-effective solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple WordPress plugin that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website compliant:
Fast Installation
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your administrator account and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the prebuilt legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated support to help users if they experience any problems.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: As long as your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. 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 you don’t need.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and covers you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will then 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 input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information from your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the plugin’s legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal page templates available:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your website or blog can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – 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 is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete your legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify 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 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific 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 normal “static” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and 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 an unlimited number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other sections of your site …
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 record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” tab …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” area, lists all of your compliance disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials customers have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains content for adult viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist you if you experience any issues. Users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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 business hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single User Personal License – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on all of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was correct when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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