One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your online presence is a fundamental part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your apps, and you won’t be allowed into a range of leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Installation Is Easy, Simple & Quick
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP admin user section and activate.
Editable Templates
Easily modify the prebuilt legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to help users if they experience any issues.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are unnecessary.
Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to web site owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive 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 Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, 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 Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, the plugin’s “Settings” section gets added to your WP backend.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your business details can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your website quite easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete the legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the compliance templates 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
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages should be included 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular premium themes (like 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” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and even 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 compliance laws …
Compliance Bar lets you manage 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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are just some testimonials that plugin customers have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published content that is inappropriate for minors, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist users. Plugin users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the product seller 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 current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly 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 how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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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