One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website needs to comply with numerous laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not even 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 reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an integral component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites 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 many other social networks could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into various leading advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a whole range 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 legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: 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 could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may 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 using online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress users that can help your site become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this article.
If your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable legal disclaimers for your web presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website compliant:
Installation Is Easy, Fast And Simple
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every other WordPress plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Editable Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify the prebuilt compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated team to assist you if you experience any problems.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar 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 an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For Every Website Purpose: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to site owners. Here are just some of these features:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and covers your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- 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 settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields inside your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal page 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
Creating compliance pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: 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 is installed with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete your legal disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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. legal 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages through 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, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify 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 period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to 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 Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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” screen, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are some of the testimonials and comments plugin users have written about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are some additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you with anything you need. Users also have access to complete video training.
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 (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Cost
- Single Edition – Can be installed on one site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get 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 help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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