One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking a law or regulation.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial costs, but also the cost to 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-use WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an essential component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into many leading advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your web properties comply with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based digital business.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs that contains over twenty customizable legal disclaimer templates for your site …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Installation Is Easy
Compliance Bar installs just like any other WP plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
Easily modify the built-in legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to help users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits of using the plugin include:
- Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided with the plugin 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 site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and ignore any unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to website owners. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU 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 that notifies your visitors and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses 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 or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once the plugin has been installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin when we last checked their 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 can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily edit and delete your legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular premium themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your site …
You can also set 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 period, and even record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to 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” area …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Image sourced from 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 compliance page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials From Plugin Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials that users have written about 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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”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)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are some additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content that is considered inappropriate for underaged viewers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to assist you if you experience any difficulties. Users also have access to video training manuals.
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 hours (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single – Install the plugin on one of your own sites. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on all of your own sites. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the product author when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim 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, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: 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 is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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