One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an essential component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into a range of other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic online users.
At the very least, if you are not compliant, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws 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 promoting or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we review in this article.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any regular plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Legal Page Templates
Easily edit the default legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you with anything you need.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal 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 every website purpose. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and leave out any unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are 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 plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, you will then have access to various sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile fields in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the plugin’s legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance templates available, covering all aspects 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
You can create compliance pages for your site quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
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 an additional set of icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily edit and delete the compliance page templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing your legal 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 many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages to include an icon for in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers 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 site, even if you are using a specific premium 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” WordPress 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 will display links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
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” section …
(EU Cookies Section: 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 edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials that plugin customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish content for adult readers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist you. You also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on a single site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product seller when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions 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. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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