One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial loss, but also the loss of 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 easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your web presence is a fundamental 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, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into various leading advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-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 in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using online, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the default legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to help users.
Some additional benefits of this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: If your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. 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 leave out any templates that you don’t need.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Display Attractive Icons – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to 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 website from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will then get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal page templates available to plugin users:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily create compliance pages for your blog or website by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can customize and delete the legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, 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 device 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 displays 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 the compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If your website contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different areas of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and capture 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 must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The plugin lets you edit 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 Screen: 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 modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials users have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
“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)
Useful Tips
Below are a few extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist you if you experience any difficulties. You also have access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Install the plugin on all as many of your own domains as you want. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar Plugin software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already 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 peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. 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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