One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking 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 serious financial losses, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of leading advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic online users.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that 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 may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress website owners that can help your site become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this article.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital business.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar installs just like every WordPress plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your administrator account and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
You can easily modify the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to help you.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website is built with 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 leave out any templates that are not required.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers you from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate the 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 individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to a number of settings.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of template pages 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your site quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on 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 comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can edit and delete your legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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 offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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 Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device 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 displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
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 …
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” section …
(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” area, lists all of your legal pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, 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 users have written about Compliance Bar:
”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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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users with anything they need. Plugin users also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single User Personal License – Can be installed on one site that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The price of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Compliance Bar
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a 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 a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. 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 in your country or region.
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