One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as 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 wide range of laws and regulations, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant 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 look at a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules keep changing, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many 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 could suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into many leading advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and guidelines, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using in your website, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your WordPress-based digital presence.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Ready To Use In Minutes
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress administrator section and activate.
Templates Are Very Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to help you.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default templates provided in 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 runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and leave out the unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides a number of features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in very little time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’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. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects you 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.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Works On All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area is added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can enter your business information into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the site:
- 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
You can create legal pages for your website quickly and easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – 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 …
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 Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can customize and delete your legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display 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 Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons 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 main page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device 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 will display links to your legal through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and even record 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 are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar 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 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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are just a few of the testimonials and feedback that users have provided for 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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”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 some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist you. Users also have access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund 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.
Product Price
- Single Site License – Install the plugin on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar Plugin product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price when this review was published. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price here: Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users 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 for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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