One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking a law or regulation.
If your website isn’t compliant 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 significant financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into many advertising or merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a whole range 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 website complies with all legal requirements and guidelines, trust and confidence in your business could become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: 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 could be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this article.
If you suspect that your website lacks in aspects of compliance, we review below a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites that you may be interested in knowing more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven sites with over 20 customizable compliance templates for your online presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the pre-built legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated plugin support team to help you with anything you need.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal templates provided with Compliance Bar 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 is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the compliance pages you need to include in your site and leave out all other unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to site owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, you get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your information can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information 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 legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of templates made available by the plugin when we last checked their 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete the legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the legal pages 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 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, image size, selecting which pages should be included 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create a number of Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have specified your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create a number of Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar 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” tab …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” section, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials that plugin users have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
“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 – Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to help users. Plugin users also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version 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 cost of purchasing.
Product Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing when this review was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state 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 for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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