One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into many other advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your web properties comply with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business could become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using on your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your web site is falling short in terms of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users you will probably be very interested in using.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Easy To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your administrator login and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily modify the default legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to assist users.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is available if you need help.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in 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: As long as your site is built with 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 unnecessary.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Content – If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and covers you from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor 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, (even in the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Features – Details
Once the plugin has been installed, you will have access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where your information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information you have entered into your User Profile fields in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily create legal pages for your website simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of 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: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can modify and delete the compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a 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” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile devices, 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 displays links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create multiple customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
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 lets you manage 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 – Screenshot 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” section, 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 just a few of the testimonials plugin users have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”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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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you include content that is inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to help users. Users also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Product Pricing
- Single User License – Install the plugin on a single domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you need. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price shown above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin seller when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download 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
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. You must 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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