One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your digital presence must comply with a number of laws and regulations, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business 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 fully 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 on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into many leading advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also 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 website complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence in doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local 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 solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, below we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that you may be very interested in knowing more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin with over twenty customizable legal pages for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every other WP plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
You can easily modify the prebuilt legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to help users.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete 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 default legal templates provided with 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 Any Website Purpose: As long as your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that you don’t need.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these features:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Content – If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and protects your site from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal page templates available to plugin users:
- 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
You can easily create legal pages for your website simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal 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 icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. 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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily edit and delete the legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates 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 position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting 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 disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal through a visually attractive 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 show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: 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 …
Compliance Bar lets you customize 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 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” screen, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin 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
Useful Tips
Below are some useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your site published content that is inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to assist you. Users also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the purchase price.
Product Cost
- Single Site Personal License – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Install the plugin on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the product retails for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here: Compliance Bar
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, please note that 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 of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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