One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken a law or regulation.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your web presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into most leading advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not compliant, you could face a whole range 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 third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress users that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based online presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar WordPress Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Easy Installation
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin user area and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
Easily edit the default legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar provides dedicated support to assist users with anything they need.
Additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal page templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: If your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you want to include in your site and leave out unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to use in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Information – If your site includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Record & 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.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your business information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last checked the site:
- 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 compliance pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. 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: Legal Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can customize and delete your compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal pages 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 installing 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, icon 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 Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 will display links to your compliance pages using 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 icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, 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 make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU 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” screen, lists all of your legal pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials and comments customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are some additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to help you with anything you need. You also have access to full video training manuals.
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 business hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on a single site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on multiple sites that you own. Can be installed on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing above was correct when this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven 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 – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. 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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