One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial costs, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is an essential part of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your 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 allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into many advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic people or organizations.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and regulations, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based digital business.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Easy & Quick To Install
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user section and activate.
Editable Page Templates
Easily modify the default compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is available if users need help.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative 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.
- Use For All Niches: As long as your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and ignore the irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to web site owners. Here are just some of those:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are 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 you from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the plugin is installed, the plugin’s “Settings” area will be added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can enter your business details into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate and display the information you have entered into your User Profile fields inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of templates made available by the plugin last time we checked the website:
- 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 legal pages for your site can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Screenshot 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 built-in set of 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: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete your compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations 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 Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar 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” screen …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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 templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials plugin customers have submitted regarding Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your site includes content that is deemed 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.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to help you. You also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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 (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Licensing – Install the plugin on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the product is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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