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 digital presence must comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial loss, but also the loss of 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 site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into a number of advertising and merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, trust and confidence in your business may be irrepairably.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a simple WordPress plugin that provides a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven sites that includes over 20 customizable compliance templates for your web presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Compliance Bar installs like any other plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your administrator account and activate.
Easily Editable Compliance Page Templates
You can easily modify the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to assist users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full 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 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 In All Niches: If your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and leave out irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in very little time.
- Display 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 page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site 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.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your website from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically 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).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, you get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the plugin’s legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”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 your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons are customizable. 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: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can modify and delete the legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your legal 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 offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: 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 compliance laws …
The plugin lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(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” area, lists all of your legal disclaimer 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 update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials plugin users have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”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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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website published content that is inappropriate for minors, 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 24/7 plugin support to help users if they experience any difficulties. Plugin users also get access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Cost
- Single – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on all as many of your own sites as you need. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details here: Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim 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 a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that 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 wherever your business is based.
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