One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses, 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 look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is an essential part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into most advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If your website falls short in terms of compliance, below we discuss a simple WordPress plugin you may be interested in using.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin with over 20 customizable legal page templates for your web presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In No Time
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your administrator login and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
You can easily edit the built-in legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to assist you if you experience any difficulties.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire 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 ascertain if the built-in legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Niches: If your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you want to include in your site and ignore any irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If your website has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’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 site or blog, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, you will then get access to various settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically insert and display the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can edit and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
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 restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
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 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” tab …
(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” tab, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are a couple of the testimonials plugin customers have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” 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
Here are a few useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to assist you. You also have access to video training manuals.
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 (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single Site Personal License – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Price details for the Compliance Bar plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this content was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software 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 current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support 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 websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, 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 to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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