One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, 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 could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into various leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, below we review a simple WordPress plugin that you may be interested in knowing more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users that contains over 20 customizable compliance disclaimers for your digital presence …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Installation Is Easy & Fast
Compliance Bar installs like any regular plugin. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily edit the prebuilt templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users with anything they need.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: If your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the templates you need to include in your site and leave out unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these features:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business 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 you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will then get access to various settings pages.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot 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 sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of your page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of template pages made available by the plugin last time we 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily create legal pages for your website simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under 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 Compliance Bar 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can modify and delete your legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your legal through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to be featured …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms or 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 multiple Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website …
You can also set 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 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 manage 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 – 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” screen, lists all of your compliance page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Plugin Users
Here are just a few of the testimonials customers have published about the Compliance Bar 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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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – 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.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website contains content that is considered inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to help users. Plugin users also have access to complete video training.
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 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the purchasing price.
Software Price
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own sites. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on multiple sites that you own. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Plugin Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get This Plugin
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, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 wherever your business is based.
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