One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of 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 suffering financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (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 approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into various advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If you are not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you are not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business may be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to maintain compliance 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 users that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin that contains over 20 customizable legal page templates for your website …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator account and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to help users if they experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice 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 wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: As long as your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every 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 leave out any that are unnecessary.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in no time.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your website from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will then have access to a number of settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last checked their site:
- 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 create compliance pages for your website quickly and easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Screenshot 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 built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons can be changed. 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: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily modify and delete your compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages should be included 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the 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 specifically 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, you can only select up to a certain number of page icons to display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout 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 interval, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: 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 manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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” screen, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials users have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Below 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 on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before 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.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users with anything they need. You also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchase price.
Software Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on one of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you like. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the plugin site 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 Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For demo videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. 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 wherever your business is based.
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