One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken a law or regulation.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious 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 article, we look at a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a range of other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
If your web site lacks in aspects of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs like any WP plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Editable Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify the pre-built templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to help you if you experience any issues.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you want to add to your site and leave out all other unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your website from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using The Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal page templates available:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your site is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can customize and delete the compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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 various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting 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 icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar 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 – 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 pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and comments plugin users have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar Plugin 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 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
Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before 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.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users if they experience any issues. You also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the purchase price.
Plugin Pricing
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the price at the time this article was published. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the plugin site 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 – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, 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 to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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