One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break 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 business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your online presence is an integral component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into many leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your web presence is not compliant, you could end up facing a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you are not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are inexpensive solutions for WordPress users that can help your business become more compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your online presence.
Presenting …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every WP plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator login and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily modify the prebuilt legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to assist users.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- 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 templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that you don’t require.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of those:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, the plugin’s “Settings” section will be added to your WP admin area.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can input your business information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to insert the information into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we 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
Creating compliance pages for your 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can customize and delete your compliance pages in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (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 device screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to be featured …
PopUps
If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU 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 …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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” 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” tab, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials plugin users have provided for Compliance Bar:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Below are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your site contains content that is considered inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help users with anything they need. Plugin users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single Site License – Install the plugin on one site that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
In Conclusion
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, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. 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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