One of the worst situations 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 digital presence must comply with a number of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into most advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your online business is not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using in your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your website falls short in terms of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you will probably be interested in using.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
Learn more about the plugin here: 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:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs just like every other plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Editable Legal Page Templates
Easily modify the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default 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.
- Can Be Used For Every Website Purpose: If your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides a number of great features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – 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 displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using The Plugin
Once you have installed the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can enter your business details into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last 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 create legal pages for your blog or website simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in 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 Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can modify and delete the compliance pages in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific premium theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display 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 Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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” screen …
(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” section, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, 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 that customers have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website contains content for adults only, 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 a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any problems. You also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the purchasing price.
Product Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The price of the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Information
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend downloading and 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 – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
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 is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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