One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with a wide range of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental part of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into most leading advertising or merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business may be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may 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 are promoting or using on your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable compliance templates for your digital presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar installs just like any WP plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin account and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
You can easily edit the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to assist users.
Additional benefits of using the plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The plugin 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 full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Information – If your site has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin last time we checked the site:
- 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 is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily modify and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 displays links to your compliance pages using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize 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 a range of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe 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 lets you customize 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 templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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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
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are a few useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any difficulties. You also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single User License – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing above was correct at the time this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar
Additional Info
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download This Plugin
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, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. 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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