One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules are constantly changing, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like 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 withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into various other advertising and merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if your website is not compliant, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your web site is falling short in terms of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable legal page templates for your online presence …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
You can easily edit the built-in compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - 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 built-in 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 In All Niches: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and leave out the unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Attractive Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your site from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will have access to a number of sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal pages available to WordPress users:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from 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 are customizable. You can purchase additional 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 Compliance Page Templates
You can customize and delete your compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If your website contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and even 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 must 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 Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Image sourced from 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 templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are some of the testimonials users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin 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 Plugin Tips
Here are some additional ways you can 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.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your site includes adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to assist you with anything you need. Plugin users also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 business hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on one site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price when this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have 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 for your peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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