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 doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is a significant part of your overall business strategy.
Without 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, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, 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 leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your web presence is not compliant, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the 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 may be promoting or using on your website, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your site.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-use WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal page templates for your online business …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin user area and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
Easily edit the prebuilt legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to assist users.
Some additional benefits of using the plugin include:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For Every Website Purpose: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you want to add to your site and leave out the irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to WP users. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, users get access to a number of sections where you can configure the plugin’s settings.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically populate and display the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of templates made available by the plugin when we last checked the website:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – 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 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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily edit and delete your legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the 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 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 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 configured 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 the compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout 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 capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: 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 requirements …
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” area …
(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” screen, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials that plugin users have written about Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
***
”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)
Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect 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 refund terms before purchase.
- If you include content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users if they experience any problems. You also have access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your purchasing price.
Software Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on multiple sites that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing details of the Compliance Bar software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly 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 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 sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no 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.
***