One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumer rights, 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 easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your web presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into a number of other advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if your website is not compliant, it may impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing online, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a simple WordPress plugin that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your site.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install plugin for WordPress-driven websites containing over twenty customizable compliance disclaimers for your digital business …
To learn more about this plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly legally compliant:
Easy & Quick To Install
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the default compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you.
Some additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Legal Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is provided if you need assistance.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For Any Website Purpose: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many great features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – 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 Content – If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that automatically populate templates 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 visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area gets added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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 compliance pages for your website simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive 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 Plugin: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can customize and delete your compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your compliance templates 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
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme (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” 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 a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” section, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, 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 comments users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are a few extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site contains content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you with anything you need. You also get access to video training.
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 (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Licensing Cost
- Single User Licensing – Install the plugin on a single site. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all of your own sites. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was correct when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software author when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get 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, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: 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 is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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