One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your digital presence must comply with numerous laws, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and 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 look at a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your online presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into various other advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
If your website is falling short in areas of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you may be very interested in knowing more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress-driven websites that includes over 20 customizable compliance disclaimers for your digital presence …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Very Easy To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your administrator account and activate.
Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the prebuilt templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to assist users.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a complete 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 default templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the legal pages you need to include in your site and ignore any irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to site owners. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers your website from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will then get access to various settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically populate the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available, covering all areas of compliance:
- 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 compliance pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive 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 Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can customize and delete your legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, 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 front 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 multiple Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. 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, 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 using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and capture 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 …
Compliance Bar 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” area …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” section, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are just a few of the testimonials and feedback plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to assist you. Plugin users also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the cost of purchase.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Can be installed on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the product website 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
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. 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 wherever your business is based.
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