One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of 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 puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your online presence is an essential aspect 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 like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into various leading advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if your business online is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to maintain compliance 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 website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based digital presence.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable compliance templates for your website …
More info: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Use In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
Easily edit the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to assist users.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use 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 wherever your business is located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that are not required.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of features to WP users. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups 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 visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and protects your site from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business information can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Address,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the plugin’s legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the site:
- 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 and quickly create compliance pages for your website or blog by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – 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 is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can customize and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device screens, 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 dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
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 …
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” area …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Image sourced from 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 compliance page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials plugin users have written about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”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 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 Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are some useful 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 you publish adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to help you. You also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller 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 latest pricing here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
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 wherever your business is based.
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