One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking a law or regulation.
Your website must comply with a whole set of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may probably not even 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 good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, 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 internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into a range of other advertising or merchant networks.
If your web presence is not compliant, you could also end up facing a multitude 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 site complies with all legal requirements and guidelines, trust and confidence in your business could be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
In this article, we review a simple WordPress plugin that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your site.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal disclaimers for your digital business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your web site instantly compliant:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
Easily modify the default compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated support to assist you with anything you need.
Additional benefits of using the plugin include:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: If your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the templates you need to include in your site and ignore irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and covers you from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with 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).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information from your User Profile inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal templates available, addressing all areas of compliance:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your site quite easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete the legal disclaimers in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- 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. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in other areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 devices, 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 displays links to your legal through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create several Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also set 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 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU 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 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” area …
(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” area, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials customers have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site published content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to help users if they experience any difficulties. Plugin users also get access to complete video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of your purchasing price.
Plugin Price
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Can be installed on multiple of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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