One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both financial losses and the loss of 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 easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into most leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws 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 easy-to-install solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website is lacking in terms of compliance, there is a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress administrator login and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
Easily modify the pre-built legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to assist users with anything they need.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in legal 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 In All Niches: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out those that are unnecessary.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to web site owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Content – If your site contains content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – 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 displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that automatically populate compliance 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 settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your business information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the plugin when we last checked their 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
Creating legal pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from 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 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily modify and delete your legal disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific premium theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically 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, 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 full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If you plan to publish 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 blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image source: 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 compliance laws …
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 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” area, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are some of the testimonials and comments plugin users have submitted for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways to 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 site.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated plugin support team to help users with anything they need. You also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the purchasing price.
Product Cost
- Single – Can be installed on one site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the product author 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 the current pricing information here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin 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 leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. 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 wherever your business is based.
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