One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the cost to 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-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your web presence is an essential part of your 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, 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 other social networks could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into various other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If you are not in compliance, you could end up facing 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 online properties comply 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!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a simple WordPress plugin that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your admin user area and activate.
Editable Templates
You can easily make changes to the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to assist users.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is available.
- 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 default legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. 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 leave out any pages that are unnecessary.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to use in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’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 be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Using The Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert the information inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last checked their website:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete the compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the legal pages 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 various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: 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 a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (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 “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and record 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 EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize 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 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” screen, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content for adult viewers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to help users if they experience any difficulties. Users also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Product Licensing Cost
- Single – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to 25 domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product sells for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading 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 demo videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and 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 Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, 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 to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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