One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an essential component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain 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, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into a number of leading advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, it may impact on 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 terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that 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 various 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 remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based online business.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Set Up. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Legal Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to assist you.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default 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 Every Website Purpose: If your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and ignore the unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your site from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will have access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information from your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked their website:
- 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 and quickly create legal pages for your blog or website simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” section …
(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 comes 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image 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. legal 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, 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 front 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 display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you 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 specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and capture 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 Cookie law …
Compliance Bar 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 – 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” screen, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are just a few of the testimonials and feedback 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)
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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 The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site published content that is deemed inappropriate for minors, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to assist you with anything you need. Plugin users also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 business hours (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Cost
- Single User License – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all of your own sites. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the product website 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 Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page 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 peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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