One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your web presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be accepted into most other advertising or merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Use In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar installs like any WP plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify the pre-built legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated plugin support to help users if they experience any issues.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: 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 an entire library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: As long as your website 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, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that you don’t need.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store 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 – The plugin 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, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, you get access to a number of settings.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where you can enter your business information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically populate the information from your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available, addressing all areas of compliance:
- 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 or blog can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – 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 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 Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can customize and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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
You have 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up 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 immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and even record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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 Screen: 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” tab, lists all of your legal pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback that customers have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your site, 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 dedicated support to help you if you experience any difficulties. Users also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchasing price.
Software Price
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product developer 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 current price here: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim 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 peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
What 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 more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
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 fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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