One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into a range of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your online business is not compliant, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your online presence is not in compliance, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
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 may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based site.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable compliance disclaimer templates for your digital presence …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator area and activate.
Easily Editable Compliance Page Templates
Easily make changes to the prebuilt compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal page 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 All Niches: As long as your website or blog 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 the unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe 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 visitors and covers your website from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – The plugin can record the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP admin area.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your business details into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked their 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create compliance pages for your site by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in 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 Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the 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. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party 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” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile 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 compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’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 a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and record 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 visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Screenshot 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” area, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials and comments that plugin users have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Below are some useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your 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.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you. Plugin users also have access to video training manuals.
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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your cost of purchase.
Product Pricing
- Single – Install the plugin on a single site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you want. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the product is selling for the amounts shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already 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, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. 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 Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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