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 intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial loss, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is an integral aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into various leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
If your web site is falling short in aspects of compliance, below we discuss a simple WordPress plugin you may be interested in knowing more about.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs containing over 20 customizable compliance page templates for your online presence …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site compliant:
Easy To Install
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP admin section and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Templates
Easily modify the pre-built compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated support team to assist you if you experience any difficulties.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- 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 the plugin 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: As long as your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you need to add to your site and ignore the irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force 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 must be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers you from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record the IP addresses of your visitors for 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 templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using The Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, the plugin’s “Settings” area is added to your WP admin area.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can input your business information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate 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) information has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your website quite easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – 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 default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. 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 Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can edit and delete your compliance page templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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. compliance pages created before installing 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 to include an icon for 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 areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 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 compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and store 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 you do business in the EU 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 …
Compliance Bar 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 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 disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials that plugin users have provided for 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
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is inappropriate for persons below a certain age on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to assist you. Plugin users also have access to complete video training.
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 hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Install the plugin on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of the Compliance Bar product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For demo videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Our Recommendation
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 full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. 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 in your country or region.
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