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 having broken a law or regulation.
Your website has to comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into a range of leading advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the 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 endorsing online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this article.
If your website or blog is falling short in terms of compliance, we review below a simple plugin for WordPress users you will probably be very interested in knowing more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily modify the built-in legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist you if you experience any difficulties.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Website Purposes: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the legal pages you want to include in your site and leave out any irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate templates 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 settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you get access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your business information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page templates made 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your website or blog quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page 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 built-in 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 – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can edit and delete the compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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 position, 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular 3rd-party themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website contains 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 terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
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” section …
(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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Feedback
Here are just some testimonials and feedback that customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Below are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to help you with anything you need. You also have access to complete 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 (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Cost
- Single User License – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all of your own sites. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software developer when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: 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 to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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