One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
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 suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential aspect 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 sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into a range of leading advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic online users.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
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 could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If your web site falls short in terms of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple WordPress plugin that contains over twenty customizable legal pages for your website …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Easy To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any regular WP plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin account and activate.
Easily Editable Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit the pre-built legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help users.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Legal Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided in 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 is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the templates you want to add to your site and leave out any irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – 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 displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the plugin has been installed, the plugin’s “Settings” screen is added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can input your business details into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last 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 compliance pages for your blog or website by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: 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 is installed with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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: Legal Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily modify and delete your compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing your compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: 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 different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (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, 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 full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and even 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 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 …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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” tab …
(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” area, lists all of your compliance page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit 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 updates …
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials that users have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Below are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to assist you with anything you need. Users also have access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double your cost of purchasing.
Product Price
- Single – Install the plugin on a single site. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Can be installed on multiple as many of your own sites as you like. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product developer when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, 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-driven sites. We recommend 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 – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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