One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial loss, 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 article, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into most advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You could 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 seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may 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 may be promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your site.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites containing over 20 customizable compliance disclaimer templates for your site …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any regular plugin. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily modify the default legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to assist you if you experience any problems.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default templates provided with 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: As long as your site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that automatically 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 – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” screen gets added to your WP backend.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile inside your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of your compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last checked the site:
- 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
You can create compliance pages for your website or blog quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” area …
(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 comes 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete your compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting 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, 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 different uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 will display links to your compliance pages through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize 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 different uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
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 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” tab …
(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” section, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Here are some of the testimonials that users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin 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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”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)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish content for adults only on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your purchase price.
Plugin Pricing
- Single – Install the plugin on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all as many of your own domains as you want. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing above was correct at the time this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how-to” videos showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend downloading and 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
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. 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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