One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with many laws, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial loss, but also 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 very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental part of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks will suspend your web apps, and you will not be accepted into many advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your online presence is not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and regulations, it could impact on your visitors trust and confidence about doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state and local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably 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 are offering or using on your website, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance & disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based online presence.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website compliant:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Compliance Bar installs like every plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your administrator section and activate.
Editable Compliance Page Templates
Easily edit the default legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any difficulties.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal 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.
- Can Be Used For Any Website Purpose: If your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many unique features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If your site includes 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 and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU 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 notifying users and covering your site from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured will be added to your WP backend.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can input your business details into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page templates made available:
- 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 or blog is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily customize and delete the compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying which pages to include an icon for in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your main 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 more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 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 displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and store 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 you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The plugin lets you customize 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 sourced from 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 their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are some of the testimonials and comments plugin users have submitted regarding the Compliance Bar 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)
Plugin Tips
Here are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to help users with anything they need. You also get access to an entire 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 (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice your cost of purchasing.
Software Price
- Single – Install the plugin on 1 of your own sites. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Install the plugin on multiple sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this article was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal 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 your peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, 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 websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Important: 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 to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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