One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your web 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, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like 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 freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into a number of leading advertising and merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that 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 may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this post.
If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, we review below a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable compliance pages for your online presence …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Easy, Quick & Simple To Install
Compliance Bar installs just like any regular WordPress plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily edit the prebuilt legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the templates provided in 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 Every Website Purpose: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that are unnecessary.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many great features to WP users. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, 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 users and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates available to WordPress users:
- 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 easily create legal pages for your website simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily edit and delete your compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 device screens, 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 will display links to your compliance pages through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms and 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 for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of 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 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin lets you edit 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 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” area, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Below are just a few of the testimonials and comments plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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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)
Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you have adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to assist users with anything they need. Plugin users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchase price.
Product Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price above was correct at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the product seller when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already 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 demo videos showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven 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 – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, please note that 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 to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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