One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, many of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial loss, but also the loss of 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 very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in 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 constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into many advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing in your website, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your site.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable legal pages for your web presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly legally compliant:
Installation Is Easy & Simple
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Templates
Easily make changes to the pre-built templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to help users if they experience any problems.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The plugin 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 if you need help.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the 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: As long as your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and leave out any irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to site owners. Here are just some of these features:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” screen gets added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your business details into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information you have entered into your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal pages 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete your compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify 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, 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular premium themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display 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 – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The 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” screen …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” screen, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page 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 …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials customers have written about Compliance Bar 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 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
Here are some additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to assist users. You also get access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the purchasing price.
Software Price
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on one site that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you need. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing when this article was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software developer when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal 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 Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. You must 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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