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 consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a fundamental component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into a range of leading advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress site owners that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for your WordPress-based website.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use plugin for WordPress websites that contains over twenty customizable compliance templates for your online presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user login and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to assist users with anything they need.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar 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.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and ignore unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website has content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, 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 your users and protects your site from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to 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 displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, users have access to various settings.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically insert and display the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of templates made available by the plugin last time we checked their 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 legal pages for your website or blog simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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: Compliance Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can edit and delete your compliance page templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from 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. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages to include an icon for 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (e.g. 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” 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 displays links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If your website publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your site …
You can also specify 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 interval, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar lets you manage 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” tab, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials users have published about 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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”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)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to help you with anything you need. You also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Licensing – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar 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 amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin seller when you visit the site 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 Plugin
Additional Information
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, 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 websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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