One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website needs to comply with a whole range of laws and regulations, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your web presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of other advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.
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 mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably 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 may be offering or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your website become more compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other WP plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the built-in legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to help users.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For Every Website Purpose: As long as your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and ignore any irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe 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 notifying visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Using The Plugin
Once the plugin has been installed, the plugin’s “Settings” section will be added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to dynamically insert the information from your User Profile inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input 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 template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the 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 create legal pages for your blog or website quickly and easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 Compliance Templates
You can modify and delete your compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular 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 device 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 full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and store 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 you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws …
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” tab …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials users have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you have adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help users. You also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Product Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on one domain that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Can be installed on all of your own sites. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price above was correct when this article was published. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. 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 of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. 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 Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. 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 wherever your business is based.
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