One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial loss, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a significant part of your overall 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 third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain 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 are offering or using online, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a complete compliance & disclaimer plugin for your WordPress-based digital presence.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use WordPress plugin with over 20 customizable compliance disclaimer templates for your digital business …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Implement. Ready To Start Using In No Time.
Compliance Bar installs just like every plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress administrator section and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
Easily edit the built-in compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to help you if you experience any issues.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: If your site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that you don’t require.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms or 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 your visitors and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – 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).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information from your User Profile fields into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked their 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create compliance pages for your website or blog simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: 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 …
The 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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 Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress 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 displays links to your compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also set 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 period, and even record 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 Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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” tab, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials plugin customers have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Below are a few extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you if you experience any problems. Users also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the cost of purchasing.
Software Price
- Single Site Licensing – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product is selling for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading 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 ”how-to” videos showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, 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-driven websites and blogs. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 wherever your business is based.
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