One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, 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 reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your web presence is an integral component 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 like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business could seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: 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 certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
In this article, we review a simple WordPress plugin that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users that contains over 20 customizable legal templates for your web presence …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly compliant:
Easy, Quick And Simple To Install
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP admin area and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the built-in compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is provided if you need assistance.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in legal 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 On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog is built with 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 irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force 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 EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where you can enter your business details into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile fields inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin when we last checked the 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 quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image 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 attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete the compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot 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. 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, specifying 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific 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 normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, 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 will display links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to be featured …
PopUps
If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your terms or 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 more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
The plugin lets you manage 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 Section: 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” section, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials that plugin customers have written about Compliance Bar:
”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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”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 a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains content that is inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to assist users. You also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your cost of purchasing.
Software Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Install the plugin on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin author when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. 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 wherever your business is based.
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