One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence is a fundamental component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party 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 shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be allowed into a number of other advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business may be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for your website.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users that contains over twenty customizable compliance templates for your digital presence …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your admin area and activate.
Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits of using the plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default legal 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 On All WordPress Sites: If your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers you from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, users will get access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields inside your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last checked the 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 create legal pages for your website or blog quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under 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 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 Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can customize and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- 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. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from 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 throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and even record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based 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 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 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” tab, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials that users have written about the Compliance Bar plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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)
Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your site published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users with anything they need. Plugin users also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy 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 double the amount of the cost of purchasing.
Product Cost
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was correct at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, 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-powered sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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