One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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 reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
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 happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a range of advertising or merchant networks.
If your online business 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 website is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business may be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
If you suspect that your website is falling short in aspects of compliance, we review below a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites that you should know more about.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable compliance disclaimer templates for your web presence …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the built-in templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist you.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided in Compliance Bar 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 or blog is driven by 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, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that are not necessary.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of great features to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups 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 EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, you will have access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available:
- 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
You can create legal pages for your site quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily edit and delete your compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, 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 will display links to your compliance pages using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen 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 in other sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin 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” tab …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Image 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 edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials users have published about Compliance Bar 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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”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
Below are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content for adult viewers on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you if you experience any difficulties. Users also have access to video training manuals.
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 hrs (Monday to Friday), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Product Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on multiple of your own sites. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller 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 current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a 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 a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Important: 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 is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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