One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial losses, 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 post, we review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial 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 freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into various other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also end up facing a number 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 all legal requirements and guidelines, 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 policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: 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 compulsory federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
If your website is falling short in aspects of compliance, we discuss below a simple WordPress plugin that you will probably be very interested in using.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable legal templates for your website …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here 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:
Installation Is Easy, Fast And Simple
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your admin section and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the pre-built compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated support to assist users with anything they need.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available if users need help.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal page templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: As long as your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you want to include in your site and leave out all other irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your website contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” screen will be added to your WP admin area.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your blog or website quite easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can edit and delete your legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular 3rd-party theme frameworks (like 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” 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 legal using 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 appear …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site …
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 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize 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 – 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” screen, lists all of your compliance page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and feedback users have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Plugin Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content for adults only on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to help you with anything you need. Plugin users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on a single domain that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple sites that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product is being retailed for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the software seller when you visit the product 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 – Additional Info
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 strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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