One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into various other advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and guidelines, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- 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 on your website, and
- There are cost-effective solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based site.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
More info: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Templates
You can easily edit the default compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users if they experience any issues.
Some additional benefits of this plugin include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is available if you need help.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default 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 For Every Website Purpose: If your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are irrelevant.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WP users. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically populate the information from your User Profile fields into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available, covering all aspects of compliance:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your site quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from 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 default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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: Compliance Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can customize and delete your legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the legal templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages should be included 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular 3rd-party theme frameworks (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” WordPress 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses in other sections of your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, 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 you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The 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 – 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 templates 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 getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Customers
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback that customers have provided for 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
Below are a few extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website published content for adult viewers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any issues. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on all as many of your own domains as you need. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was published. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price here: Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. 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 ”how to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: 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 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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