One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a 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 intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you won’t be allowed into most advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance 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 compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple WordPress plugin that provides a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin area and activate.
Editable Compliance Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated team to help you with anything you need.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that 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 your business is located.
- Use In All Niches: If your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you need to include in your site and ignore any irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to web site owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User 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 visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the 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 individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using The Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information from your User Profile fields in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates available, covering all areas of compliance:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your website or blog quickly and easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete your compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – 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. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various 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 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, 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 in different sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically 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 displays 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 the compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require 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 – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin lets you manage 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 – 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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments that customers have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you include content for adult readers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to help users. Users also have access to full 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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the cost of purchase.
Product Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on all of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing when this article was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the 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
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. 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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