One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with a number of laws, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business 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 site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is an integral component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of leading advertising and merchant networks.
If you are not in compliance, you could also face a whole range 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 seriously damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
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 compulsory federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress users that includes over 20 customizable legal templates for your site …
More info: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site compliant:
Quick Installation
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every WP plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin login and activate.
Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the built-in compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to help users with anything they need.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if 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 you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any pages that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin can record the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, you will get access to a number of sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically insert the information inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from 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” area contains all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available:
- 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 create legal pages for your website by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons are customizable. 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: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can edit and delete the legal disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the compliance pages 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
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: 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 various uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 displays links to your compliance pages through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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 edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials that plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
***
”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 – Useful Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you include content that is deemed 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
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to assist you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your cost of purchase.
Plugin Pricing
- Single User Licensing – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software author 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 current price here: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
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 strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. 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 – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. 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.
***
