One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a fundamental part of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into most leading advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and regulations, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress website owners that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your website.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Configure. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs just like every WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin user login and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily modify the default legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any issues.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The 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 full library of training videos is provided if you need help.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice 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 In All Niches: If your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. 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 leave out any pages that you don’t require.
Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Information – If your site includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to 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).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked their 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
Creating legal pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. 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: Legal Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can modify and delete the compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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
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, icon size, selecting which pages to include an icon for in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot 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 sections of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself 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 dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to show 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 blocks access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of 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 record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are 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 Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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” section, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials From Customers
Below are some of the testimonials users have provided for Compliance Bar:
”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
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish content that is inappropriate for minors on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you. Plugin users also have access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 hours (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Pricing
- Single Site Personal License – Install the plugin on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on all domains that you own. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software retails for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For demo videos of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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