One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking a law or regulation.
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 incurring 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 cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is a significant part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into various advertising or merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if your web presence is not compliant, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws 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 offering or endorsing online, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your web site lacks in aspects of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress sites that you may be interested in using.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress-powered sites that includes over 20 customizable compliance disclaimers for your online business …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any regular plugin. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator account and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Compliance Page Templates
Easily edit the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is provided if you need help.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the legal templates provided in 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 Website Purposes: If your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you need to add to your site and ignore any unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers you from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, you will get 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 categories in this area where your information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert and display the information you have entered into your User Profile fields into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the profile 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 templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin last time we checked the site:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular 3rd-party themes (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 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 your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create several Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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 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” screen, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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)
Useful Tips
Below are some useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content that is inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you with anything you need. Plugin users also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your purchasing price.
Plugin Cost
- Single Site Personal License – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Install the plugin on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Current pricing for the Compliance Bar software 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 pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the plugin 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 Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing how the plugin works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. 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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