One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.
Your website must comply with a whole set of laws, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important to stay informed about what’s going on 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.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, 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 close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into a number of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply 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 tool that we review in this post.
If you suspect that your web site lacks in terms of compliance, below we review a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users with over 20 customizable legal page templates for your site …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any other WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the pre-built compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated support to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Niches: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and ignore any irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups 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 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 your users and protects your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business information can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information from your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page templates available to plugin 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your site simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can edit and delete your compliance pages in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your compliance templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, 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 visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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” tab, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials that plugin customers have provided for 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)
***
”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to help users with anything they need. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your purchase price.
Software Pricing
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Can be installed on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Additional 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 of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: 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 of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
***