One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both 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 article, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial 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 could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into a range of leading advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not in compliance, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- 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 easy solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in aspects of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
You can easily modify the default compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to assist you if you experience any problems.
Some additional benefits of using the plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is available if users need help.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: If your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and ignore any unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar 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 didn’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, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information entered into your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available, addressing all aspects of compliance:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your site quickly and easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed 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: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can modify and delete your legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 will display links to your compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your website contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
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 period, 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 are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The plugin 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” area …
(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 legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials From Customers
Here are just a few of the testimonials and comments users have provided for Compliance Bar:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Below are a few 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.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content for adults only on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users with anything they need. You also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchasing price.
Plugin Cost
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you need. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing when this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product 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 the current pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For demo videos showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our 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 in your country or region.
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