One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken the law.
Your website or blog has to comply with various federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is an integral aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into most other advertising and merchant networks.
If you are not compliant, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post 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,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using on your website, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress websites that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable compliance templates for your site …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Editable Page Templates
Easily make changes to the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default 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 For All Website Purposes: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you want to include in your site and leave out any unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to site owners. Here are just some of those:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your website has 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 website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering you from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- 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 The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, you will have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Address,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available to WordPress 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your website quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete the compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying which pages should be included 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular 3rd-party themes (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 device screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are 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 …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit 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 – 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” area, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback that plugin users have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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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)
Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your site includes content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help users with anything they need. You also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the cost of purchase.
Software Pricing
- Single Site License – Install the plugin on 1 of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this article was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly 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 help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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