One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your digital presence needs to comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is an essential component 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 such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into most other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and guidelines, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services 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 article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
If your website or blog is falling short in areas of compliance, there is a simple WordPress plugin that you should know more about.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users containing over 20 customizable legal disclaimers for your online presence …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website compliant:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your administrator account and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the pre-built compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to assist users.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Website Purposes: If your site is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any pages that you don’t need.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to website owners. Here are just some of those features:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business details can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: 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
- 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 legal pages for your website or blog simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can customize and delete the legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the legal templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create several Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
Compliance Bar lets you edit 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 Screen: 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 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 Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials users have submitted for the Compliance Bar Plugin 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 Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Below are some useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your site includes content that is inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to help you. Users also have access to full 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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the purchase price.
Plugin Cost
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on multiple of your own sites. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing above was correct at the time this review was published. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing information: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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