One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering 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 post, we look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be allowed into various leading advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory 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 may be promoting or using on your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users that includes over 20 customizable legal disclaimers for your website …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar installs like every other WordPress plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the default legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated plugin support team to help users if they experience any problems.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar 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 provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default 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 For Every Website Purpose: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and leave out any irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides a number of features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If your site has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, users get access to a number of settings.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked their website:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your website or blog simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Screenshot 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 icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily edit and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 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 legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, 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 – Image sourced from 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 edit the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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” section, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have written about 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)
***
”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content for adult viewers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist you. You also have access to video training manuals.
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 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the purchasing price.
Software Price
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Additional Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get 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 helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
***
