One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your digital presence needs to comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the cost to 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 very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an integral aspect of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into various other advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing on 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, you will learn about a simple WordPress plugin that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs like every other WordPress plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin area and activate.
Editable Templates
Easily modify the pre-built legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any issues.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if 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 wherever your business is located.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the compliance pages you want to include in your site and leave out the irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, users will then have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the plugin’s legal templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin last time we checked the site:
- 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
You can easily and quickly create compliance pages for your blog or website by simply selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete your compliance page templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting which pages should be included 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular premium themes (e.g. 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, 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 compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab 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 for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe 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 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” tab …
(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 edit their 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 Plugin Users
Below are just some testimonials and feedback customers have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Here are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is inappropriate for minors on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help users with anything they need. Plugin users also have access to a complete 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 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the purchase price.
Product License Pricing
- Single User License – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
We Recommend
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 complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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