One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking the law.
Your website needs to comply with a whole range of laws, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a range of leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- 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 online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites that you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your site …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator account and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily edit the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
Dedicated Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any problems.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire 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 templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that are not required.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Content – If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and 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 notifying your visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once you have installed the plugin, users will then have 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 area where your business details can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information inside your legal pages …
(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 areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the plugin’s compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin last time we checked their site:
- 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
You can easily create legal pages for your site simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under 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 additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete the legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various 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 to include an icon for 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. 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” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: 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 throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and capture 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 your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The Compliance Bar 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” 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” screen, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback that users have submitted for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
***
“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish 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.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to help you if you experience any difficulties. Users also have access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 business hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, 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 sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that 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 of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
***