One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website must comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is an integral component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into various leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 the 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 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, we review a simple plugin for WordPress sites that provides a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users that contains over 20 customizable legal page templates for your online business …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any plugin. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WP admin user account and activate.
Editable Legal Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to assist you if you experience any problems.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that are not required.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that force 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 need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store 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 haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the 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 screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information from your User Profile in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance templates available to plugin users:
- 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 easily and quickly create legal pages for your website or blog simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily edit and delete your legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates 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 position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. 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 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 a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, 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” 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 compliance templates 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 getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are just a few of the testimonials users have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to help users. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you need. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the product author when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Info
Templates Reviewed 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 professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal 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 of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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