One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking a law or regulation.
Your website must comply with a number of laws and regulations, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your online presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may 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 allowed into various other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your online business is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that 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 could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are cost-effective solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in areas of compliance, we review below a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable legal disclaimers for your website …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar installs just like any regular WordPress plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin login and activate.
Easily Editable Compliance Page Templates
Easily modify the built-in compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar provides a dedicated support team to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the legal pages you want to add to your site and ignore the irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – 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, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once the plugin has been installed, the plugin’s “Settings” section will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information you have entered into your User Profile fields into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of the plugin’s pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Screenshot 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 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
Creating legal pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in 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 WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. 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 Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can edit and delete the compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout 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 configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab 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 more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site …
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 appearing again within a specific time period, and capture 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 you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
Compliance Bar lets you customize 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 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 disclaimers 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 getting plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that customers have written about 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
Below are some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help you. Users also have access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 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 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your cost of purchasing.
Plugin Cost
- Single Site Licensing – Install the plugin on 1 domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on all sites that you own. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product sells for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
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 legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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