One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of 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 significant financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant part of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into various other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your business online is not compliant, it may impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
If your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress sites that you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your website …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any WordPress plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily edit the prebuilt legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that are not necessary.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU 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 that notifies your visitors and protects you from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar 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 – The plugin 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 – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, users will get access to a number of settings.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile fields in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available:
- 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 compliance pages for your website is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete the compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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, 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, 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 device screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays 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 the compliance bar to be featured …
PopUps
If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website …
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 Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are 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 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 – Image 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 legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”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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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is 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.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to assist users with anything they need. You also get access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on one site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on multiple of your own sites. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is selling for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, please note that 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 to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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