One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant 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 review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an essential aspect of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your 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 approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into various leading advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if your website is not compliant, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based web presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any regular plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP admin user login and activate.
Easily Editable Legal Page Templates
Easily make changes to the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
Dedicated Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - 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 make sure that the legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use In All Niches: If your site 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 leave out any pages that are not necessary.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will then have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert the information entered into your User Profile fields inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information 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 pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal page templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of 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: Compliance Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete your compliance page templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your compliance 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular 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 normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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 Section: Manage Settings – Screenshot 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” tab, lists all of your compliance page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Customers
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin customers have published 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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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to help you. Plugin users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back 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), the plugin developers will refund twice your cost of purchase.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Can be installed on multiple sites that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for the Compliance Bar Plugin product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the product retails for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, 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 sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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