One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your online presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, 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 on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into a number of other advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business may become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state or local laws 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 may be offering or endorsing online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar installs just like any other plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin section and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
You can easily modify the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to help you if you experience any problems.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if 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 wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For Every Website Purpose: If your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some of those:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business details can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display 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” section contains all of the compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance 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
Creating compliance pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: 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 default set of attractive 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete your legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal pages 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
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular premium themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display 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 to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, 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 do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar 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” tab …
(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 legal page 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 Feedback
Below are a couple of the testimonials plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways you can 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 website only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content for adult viewers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist you. You also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 hrs (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Install the plugin on all as many of your own domains as you need. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing the Compliance Bar product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Compliance Bar
Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly 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 of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. You must 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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