One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into a number of leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state and local laws that govern your business (some of which you may 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 may be offering or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your WordPress-based online presence.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Easy To Install
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin account and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
Easily edit the built-in legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal page templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the compliance pages you need to add to your site and leave out any irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many unique features to WP users. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, users will have access to various settings pages.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information you have input into your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the 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
Creating compliance pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot 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 …
Icons are customizable. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can edit and delete your legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from 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
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
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 Screen: 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 pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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)
Plugin Tips
Below are some useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to help users. You also have access to a complete set of training videos.
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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the cost of purchase.
Plugin Price
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Install the plugin on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, 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-powered websites and blogs. 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 – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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