One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring 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 post, we review a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
If your website is falling short in terms of compliance, below we review a simple WordPress plugin you will probably be interested in knowing more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
Easily modify the default compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to help users with anything they need.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default 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 For Any Website Purpose: If your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and leave out all other unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to use in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – 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 displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, you will then have access to various settings pages.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically insert and display the information from your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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
You can easily create legal pages for your website by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can edit and delete your compliance disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (like 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 device 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 using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If your site has content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms and 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 unlimited customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and store 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 you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” tab …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” area, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials customers have written about Compliance Bar:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are a few useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site contains content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to help you if you experience any difficulties. You also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Product License Price
- Single Site License – Can be installed on one of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price at the time this content was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the plugin site 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
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional 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 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-driven websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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