One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
Your digital presence must comply with a number of laws and regulations, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into most other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could end up facing 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 regulations, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
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 compulsory federal, state and local laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we review below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress sites that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-install plugin for WordPress users with over twenty customizable legal disclaimer templates for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your admin section and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
Easily make changes to the pre-built legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated support to help users with anything they need.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative 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 you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your website is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you want to add to your site and ignore unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Using The Plugin
Once the plugin has been installed, the plugin’s “Settings” section will be added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s briefly review these sections …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your business details can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Address,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of templates made available by the plugin last time we checked the website:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your website quite easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete your compliance pages from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have 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 front 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 several Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 device screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display 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 to display your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete 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 displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of your site …
You can also specify 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe 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 manage the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” section, lists all of your compliance disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and comments plugin users have published about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist users if they experience any issues. Users 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 business hours (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Additional Plugin Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install 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.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. 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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