One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumers, 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 reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legal, especially if your online presence is an essential component of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into a range of other advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
If you are 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 all legal requirements and regulations, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or using online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your site become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this article.
If you suspect that your website lacks in terms of compliance, we review below a simple WordPress plugin that you should know more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website compliant:
Installation Is Easy
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every other WordPress plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
Easily make changes to the default legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users if they experience any issues.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the legal page templates provided with 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 site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and ignore irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides a number of features to WP users. Here are just some of those features:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based 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 displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your website from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records 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 is integrated with shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using The Plugin
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your information can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your blog or website quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete the legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot 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 other areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 will display 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 your compliance icons to be featured …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your website …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and record 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 you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit 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 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” section, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are some of the testimonials that plugin users have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes content that is inappropriate for minors, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any issues. Users also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 double the amount of the purchase price.
Plugin Pricing
- Single Site Personal License – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License – Can be installed on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the product sells for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual price set by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have already 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 showing how the plugin works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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