One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and 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 site compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic online users.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
If your website is falling short in terms of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every plugin. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the default legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any difficulties.
Some additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar 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.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that are not required.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many unique features to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using The Plugin
Once the plugin is installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Address,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically insert the information into your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your blog or website quite easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily modify and delete the compliance disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude 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 particular themes (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 normal “static” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws …
Compliance Bar lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU 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” screen, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials customers have provided for Compliance Bar 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)
Plugin Tips
Here are some useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content for adults only on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist users. Plugin users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double your cost of purchasing.
Software Price
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on 1 site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you need. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product developer when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Page 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 strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin in action, 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 downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, 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 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 the law in your country or region.
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