One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your internet presence needs to comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and 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 look at a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a number of leading advertising and merchant networks.
If you are not compliant, you could end up facing a multitude 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 site complies with legal requirements and guidelines, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: 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 certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this article.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress administrator login and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the prebuilt compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated support team to help users if they experience any difficulties.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice 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 anywhere in the world.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and ignore irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to website owners. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers you from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area will be added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Address,” “Location Details,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information entered into your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of templates made available by the plugin when we last 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete the legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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 where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages should be included 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 more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme framework (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 normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile 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 compliance pages through dynamic 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 you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses in other sections of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, 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 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 …
The plugin 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” section …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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 disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Below are some of the testimonials users have written about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
***
”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
Plugin Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers, 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 24/7 plugin support to assist you. Plugin users also have access to full video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the purchase price.
Software Price
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on 1 site that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was correct at the time this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading 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 ”how to” videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
***
