One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your digital presence must comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into most leading advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
To learn more about this plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user section and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
Easily make changes to the default compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to assist users with anything they need.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if 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 you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and leave out any unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your website has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store the IP addresses 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 uses shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once the plugin has been installed, users will then get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to dynamically insert and display the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last 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
Creating legal pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can modify and delete your compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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. compliance pages created before you installed 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 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically 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 legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar 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” section …
(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” section, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their 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 …
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials and comments that users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Below are some useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users. You also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice your cost of purchase.
Plugin Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price set by the plugin author when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 in your country or region.
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