One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you won’t be allowed into a range of advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could end up facing a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using in your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress websites and blogs containing over 20 customizable compliance templates for your online business …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar installs just like any regular plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the built-in legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Compliance 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 complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default legal page 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: As long as your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that are unnecessary.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Information – If your website has content that should 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 site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using The Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, users will then get access to a number of sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where you can input your business information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically populate the information from your User Profile fields in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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 create compliance pages for your website or blog quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting which pages should be included in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: 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 a range of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 legal through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If your site contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and 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 a number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and even record 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 need to 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” 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” area, lists all of your legal page 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 receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments plugin users have published about Compliance Bar:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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 extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you with anything you need. Users also get access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single Site Licensing – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Can be installed on multiple domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For demo videos showing how the plugin works, 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-driven websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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