One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your internet presence needs to comply with many federal, state and even local laws, some 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 cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into many advertising and merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if your business online is not in compliance, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our 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 compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using in your website, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Easy And Fast To Install
Compliance Bar installs like any WordPress plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily modify the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated support team to help users.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is available if users need help.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in 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 In All Niches: As long as your site is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you need to include in your site and leave out the unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to web site owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your site has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and covers your website from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record and store your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your information can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to automatically insert the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your site quite easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
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 Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can customize and delete the compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set a cookie duration 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is 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 …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you manage 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 compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials From Customers
Here are just some testimonials and comments that plugin customers have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
”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 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
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content for adults only on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist you. Users also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Install the plugin on multiple sites that you own. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of the Compliance Bar software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software author when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. 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 here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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