One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the cost to 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 legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into various advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory 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 are offering or using online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress website owners that can help your site become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
If you suspect that your website is lacking in areas of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress users that you will probably be very interested in knowing more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Quick Installation
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your admin section and activate.
Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
Easily edit the pre-built compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal page templates provided with 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: If your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, users get access to various settings pages.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your business details can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates made available:
- About Us
- AdSense Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreements
- Affiliate Disclosure
- 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 create legal pages for your blog or website by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons can be changed. 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 Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete your compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot 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. pages created before installing 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, specifying which pages to include an icon for 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular themes (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” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also set 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 store 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 be aware of EU Cookie law …
The plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” tab …
(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” area, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments plugin users have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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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)
Plugin Tips
Here are some useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site includes content for adult viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users. Users also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition 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 twice the cost of purchase.
Product Licensing Cost
- Single Edition – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Can be installed on multiple of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was correct when this content was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Info
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For demo videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. You must 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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