One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial loss, but also the cost to 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 easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is an integral component of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, 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 on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into most advertising and merchant networks.
If your online business is not compliant, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing on your website, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
In this article, we review a simple WordPress plugin that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Fast Installation
Compliance Bar installs like any WordPress plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin user login and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
Easily edit the built-in compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated team to help users if they experience any issues.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in 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 On All WordPress Sites: If your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you want to add to your site and ignore all other irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and 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 Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and covers your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, you get access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your business information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal page templates available to plugin users:
- 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
Creating compliance pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can modify and delete your legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the legal templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have 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 to include an icon for in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (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 devices, 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 through a visually attractive 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 you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses in different sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and record 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 you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws …
The plugin lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” tab …
(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” area, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback users have written about Compliance Bar:
”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)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways you can 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 of your site.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have adult content on your site, 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 help you if you experience any issues. You also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the cost of purchase.
Software Pricing
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on 25 domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar 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 complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 the law wherever your business is based.
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