One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial loss, 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 article, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and rules are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an integral component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into most other advertising or merchant networks.
If you are not compliant, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and guidelines, it may impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- 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 solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
If your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven websites that contains over twenty customizable compliance pages for your online business …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs like every other plugin. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily edit the default legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to assist you if you experience any issues.
Some additional benefits of this plugin include:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided in 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 Any Website Purpose: If your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to WP users. Here are just some of these features:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start using 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 placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – 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 force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – 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.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section is added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information you have input into your User Profile fields into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your site is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can customize and delete your compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing 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 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 a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is 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 screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize 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 a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, 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 you are 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 Compliance Bar 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 – 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 legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials and comments that plugin users have published about the 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 – Useful Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is considered inappropriate for underaged viewers on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to assist you if you experience any issues. Plugin users also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the cost of purchasing.
Product License Price
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the product retails for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer 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 the current pricing details here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our 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 wherever your business is based.
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