One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial costs, 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 very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web 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 statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, 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, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-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 many legal requirements in accordance with 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 are offering or endorsing in your website, and
- There are cost-effective plugins for WordPress users that can help your website 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 WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
To learn more about this plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Ready To Use In Minutes
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your administrator section and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily edit the pre-built legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to help users.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided if you need assistance.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Niches: As long as your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the templates you need to add to your site and ignore any irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to site owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records 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.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Using The Plugin
Once you have installed the plugin, you will have access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates 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 quickly and easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons are customizable. You can purchase additional 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 Compliance Page Templates
You can customize and delete your legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device screens, 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 will display links to your legal using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and even record 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 your business is based in Europe 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 …
Compliance Bar 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” 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” screen, lists all of your legal disclaimers 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 receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials that users have provided for Compliance Bar:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your site includes content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to assist users if they experience any issues. Users also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on a single site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own domains as you need. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin seller when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here: Compliance Bar
Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional 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, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend 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 – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, 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 wherever your business is based.
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