One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken a law or regulation.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of 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 reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into many other advertising or merchant networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you are not compliant, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
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 federal, state or local laws and regulations 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 online, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website is lacking in areas of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress websites you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use WordPress plugin that includes over twenty customizable compliance disclaimers for your web presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Use In No Time.
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Editable Compliance Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the prebuilt compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users if they experience any difficulties.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use For Any Website Purpose: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that are unnecessary.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – 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 they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (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 mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to a number of settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically insert the information from your User Profile fields into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin last time we checked their website:
- 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 create legal pages for your website quickly and easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete your compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: 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. legal pages created before installing 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, icon size, specifying 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 displays links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create several customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and even record 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 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 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” section …
(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” area, lists all of your legal disclaimer 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 receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback that customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin 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
Plugin Tips
Below are some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers on your website, 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 dedicated support to assist you with anything you need. Plugin users also get access to video training.
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 (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the cost of purchase.
Plugin Price
- Single – Install the plugin on 1 of your own domains. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you need. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the software developer when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. 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 showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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