One of the worst things that can happen to any 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, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into many advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic people or organizations.
At the very least, if your business online is not compliant, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
If you suspect that your website or blog is falling short in aspects of compliance, there is a simple WordPress plugin you will probably be interested in knowing more about.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-install WordPress plugin that contains over twenty customizable legal pages for your website …
To learn more about this plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin area and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users with anything they need.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - 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 make sure that the templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For Any Website Purpose: If your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and ignore irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many great features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Information – If your website includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the plugin has been installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WP backend.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your business information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal templates available, addressing all areas of compliance:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your site is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete your legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before you installed 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, selecting which pages should be included 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 will display links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
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” area …
(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” section, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are just some testimonials plugin customers have written about the Compliance Bar plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers on your site, 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 24/7 plugin support to help users with anything they need. Users also have access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 business hours (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single Site Personal License – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this review was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the product author when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For demo videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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