One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial loss, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into a number of leading advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic people or organizations.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and guidelines, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website instantly compliant:
Installation Is Easy
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify the pre-built legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated support team to help users.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice 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 wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: As long as your site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the compliance pages you need to include in your site and leave out unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of 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 display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your business information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert and display the information you have input into your User Profile fields in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page templates available:
- 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 website can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons can be changed. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can modify and delete your compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages should be included 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically 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, 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 appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create several customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(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 page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are just some testimonials and comments that plugin customers have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website published content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help users. You also have access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the cost of purchase.
Plugin Cost
- Single – Can be installed on one domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing shown above was correct at the time this content was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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