One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking the law.
Your website has to comply with a number of federal, state and even local laws, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-install WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you won’t be allowed into a range of advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, if your online business is not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business may be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory 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 are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a complete compliance & disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based online presence.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable compliance disclaimers for your online business …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Installation Is Easy And Simple
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
You can easily make changes to the default legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help 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 provided if you need assistance.
- 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 your business is located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the templates you need to include in your site and ignore any unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe 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 notifying your visitors and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores 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 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 Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile fields inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your site quickly and easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily edit and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the legal pages 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 where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 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 will display links to your compliance pages through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create several customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to 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 Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(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 compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin users have written about 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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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out 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
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users with anything they need. You also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single Site Personal License – Can be installed on a single site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed 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 all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing the Compliance Bar software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar
Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. 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 showing how the plugin works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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