One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an integral component of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into various other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your business online is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business could be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations 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 promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are plugins for WordPress website owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your WordPress-based website.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs with over 20 customizable legal page templates for your digital presence …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other WordPress plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Editable Legal Page Templates
Easily make changes to the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated support team to help users with anything they need.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the legal templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are unnecessary.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to start using in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” screen is added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information 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 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, addressing all areas 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
Creating compliance pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive 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 Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete your legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(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 a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and record 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 Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to 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” tab …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” section, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments that plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar 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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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the 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.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to assist users. Users also have access to complete 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), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the cost of purchase.
Product License Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on up to 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price shown above was current at the time this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin author when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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