One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your site legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an essential component of your overall business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial 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 shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a number of other advertising and merchant networks.
If you are not in compliance, 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 your website is not in compliance, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this post.
If your web site falls short in areas of compliance, we review below a simple plugin for WordPress users you will probably be very interested in using.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your site …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly compliant:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily edit the prebuilt legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available if you need help.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used On All WordPress Sites: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the legal pages you want to add to your site and leave out the irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of those:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin records the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section gets added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Company Phone Number,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields in your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen lists all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the site:
- 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
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your website or blog by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons are customizable. 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: Compliance Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can edit and delete your compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific 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” 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 will display links to your legal using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in Europe 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” area …
(EU Cookies Section: 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” tab, lists all of your legal pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are just a few of the testimonials and feedback plugin 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 Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Below are some extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting 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 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 view your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to help you. Users also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Product Pricing
- Single Edition – Install the plugin on 1 domain that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer 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 in your country or region.
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