One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website or blog must comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and 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 WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if you are not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business could seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this article.
If you suspect that your website is lacking in aspects of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs that you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable legal disclaimer templates for your website …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the built-in compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to assist you if you experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The Compliance Bar 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 complete library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: As long as 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 pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can input your business details into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(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 areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked their 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
You can create compliance pages for your blog or website quickly and easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of 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 Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete your legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have 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 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar 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 website, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (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” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that restricts access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU 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 …
The plugin lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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” tab, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published adult content, 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 users if they experience any issues. Users also have access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy 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 the purchase price.
Software Pricing
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software author when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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