One of the worst situations you can find yourself in 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 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 suffering financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence is a significant component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into many other advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business could become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: 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 certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple WordPress plugin that provides a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily modify the prebuilt legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated support to assist users if they experience any issues.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a complete library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal page templates provided with the plugin 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: If your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that are not required.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – 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 displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, you will have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate the information inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of 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 check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can customize and delete the compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the legal templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing 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, image size, specifying which pages to include an icon for 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 an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, 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, 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 will display links to your compliance pages 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 show …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that restricts access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create several Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of your site …
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 store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar 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” screen …
(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 page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are a few of the testimonials and comments users have published about Compliance Bar:
”WOW” 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
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to full video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version 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 double the amount of your purchase price.
Product License Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on all as many of your own domains as you want. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software sells for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. 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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