One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into many leading advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
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 all legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business could be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple WordPress plugin that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In No Time.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin login and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
Easily edit the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist you with anything you need.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Legal Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete 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 make sure that the templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” screen gets added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance 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 and quickly create legal pages for your website or blog simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can modify and delete the legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages to include an icon for 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen 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 displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar 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 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” section, lists all of your legal 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 …
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that customers have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist you with anything you need. You also get access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the purchasing price.
Software Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on multiple domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product seller when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – 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 a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 the law wherever your business is based.
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