One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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 good 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 website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising and merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies 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, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could 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 be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress users that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your WordPress-based website.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over 20 customizable compliance disclaimer templates for your digital business …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any regular plugin. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your administrator section and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Compliance Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the built-in legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to assist users with anything they need.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar will create 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 full library of training videos is provided if you need help.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: 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 the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: If your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the pages you want to include in your site and ignore the irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store 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 – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, you have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked their site:
- 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 easily create compliance pages for your blog or website simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons are customizable. 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 modify and delete your compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal pages 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 various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and even record 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 visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar 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” screen …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Image sourced from 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 edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Below are a couple of the testimonials that customers have published about Compliance Bar:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
***
”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to assist you if you experience any problems. Users also get access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your cost of purchasing.
Plugin Pricing
- Single User Licensing – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own domains as you need. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar Plugin software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software 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 current pricing information: Compliance Bar
Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal 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.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
***