One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a fundamental part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you won’t be allowed into many other advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, 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 in compliance, trust and confidence in your business could become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services 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 compulsory laws that govern your business,
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using on your website, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar installs like every other WordPress plugin. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily edit the default compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to help users if they experience any problems.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal page 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 On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the templates you need to add to your site and leave out all other unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to use in very little time.
- Show Attractive 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 your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once you have installed the plugin, users will have access to various settings pages.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your business details into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Company Phone Number,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available, addressing all aspects 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your blog or website quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can customize and delete the compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: 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. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular premium 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” 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 compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content 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” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe 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 …
The Compliance Bar 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 – Image 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” area, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials that plugin customers have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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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
Below are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help users if they experience any issues. Plugin users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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 hours (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single Site Licensing – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Can be installed on multiple of your own sites. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software is selling for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software seller when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
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 lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 the law wherever your business is based.
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