One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website or blog has to comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and 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 cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is a significant aspect of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into most advertising or merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if your online business is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory 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 endorsing online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
In this article, we review a simple WordPress plugin that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven sites with over twenty customizable legal disclaimer templates for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every WordPress plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP admin area and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the default legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help users.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Templates: The plugin 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 - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: As long as your site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the compliance pages you want to add to your site and ignore the irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many unique features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area gets added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information from your User Profile inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the 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 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 “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in 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: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily modify and delete your compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the compliance 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 home 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 an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular 3rd-party themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is 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 through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If your site publishes 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 restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and store 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 are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin lets you customize 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 Screen: Manage Settings – Image 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 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 receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials customers have submitted for the Compliance Bar Plugin 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 Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to assist users if they experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your purchasing price.
Software Pricing
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you want. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Additional Info
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 the law wherever your business is based.
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