One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your internet presence needs to comply with a wide range of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering 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 article, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your web presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into most advertising and merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if your digital presence is not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your WordPress-based digital business.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator account and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
You can easily edit the default legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is available if users need help.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in legal page templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: If your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of features to site owners. Here are just some of these features:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering you from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (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 browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to a number of sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in 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 Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – 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. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, 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 normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile 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 will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create several Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, 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 do business 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 …
Compliance Bar lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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 compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are some of the testimonials users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website published content for adults only, 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 support team to help users. You also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your cost of purchase.
Plugin Cost
- Single Site License – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Additional Plugin Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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