One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with a number of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an essential component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many 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 close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into various advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, 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 in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
If you suspect that your website is falling short in areas of compliance, here is a simple WordPress plugin you will probably be very interested in knowing more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Quick And Easy Installation
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
Easily modify the pre-built templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that are not required.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your business from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores 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 uses shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically insert the information from your User Profile fields into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates available to plugin users:
- About Us
- AdSense Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreements
- Affiliate Disclosure Statement
- 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 create legal pages for your site quickly and easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: 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 icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily modify and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal 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. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific premium theme (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 normal “static” 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 through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create multiple customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and 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 your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
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” area …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” area, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Below are just some testimonials and comments users have submitted for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help you with anything you need. Users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your cost of purchasing.
Plugin Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, 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-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
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 of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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