One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed 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 business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into many leading advertising or merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business could be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws 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 solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your online presence.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily modify the pre-built compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you if you experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and 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 built-in 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 For All Niches: If your website or blog runs on 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, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that are not required.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of great features to web site owners. Here are just some of those:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can input your information into input (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 Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically populate the information from your User Profile in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of your page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates available, addressing all areas of compliance:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
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 an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily customize and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your legal pages 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 various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting 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 – Image sourced from 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 website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like 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 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 will display links to your legal through 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 publishes content that should 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 visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and even record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
Compliance Bar 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” tab …
(EU Cookies Section: 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 page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Below are some of the testimonials users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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
Below are some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users. Plugin users also have access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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.
Software Cost
- Single – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on all domains that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was correct when this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading 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 of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, 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 fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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