One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the loss of 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-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into a range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their 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 could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress users that can help your website become more compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for your WordPress-based online presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal page templates for your website …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Implement. Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any regular WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the built-in compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to help users with anything they need.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the legal page templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: If your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that are not necessary.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, users get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the website:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your site is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your 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: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily modify and delete your legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the legal templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance 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, 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 main 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 disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular 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 normal “static” WordPress 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance laws …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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” area, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page 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 …
Feedback From Users
Here are some of the testimonials that users have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
***
”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 some extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site published content that is inappropriate for minors, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist users with anything they need. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double your purchase price.
Product Licensing Cost
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you need. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the product is selling for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. 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 demo videos showing how the plugin 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 sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
***