One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website must comply with a whole set of laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both 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 look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into many leading advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and guidelines, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state and local laws and regulations 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 endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites that provides a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any plugin. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily edit the prebuilt compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users if they experience any problems.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin creates 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 complete library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- 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 legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and leave out all other irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If your website contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, you will get access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile inside your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of templates made available by the plugin last time we 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily create legal pages for your website simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Plugin: Compliance Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete the legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image 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. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many 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 to include an icon for 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create several customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and capture 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 your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar 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” screen …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” area, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their 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 Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials that plugin customers have published about 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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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your site includes content for adult viewers, 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 dedicated plugin support to assist users with anything they need. Users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the cost of purchase.
Software Cost
- Single – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Price details for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin 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 – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For demo videos showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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