One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website or blog must comply with a whole range of laws and regulations, some of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial costs, but also the cost to 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 solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your web presence is an integral aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into a number of advertising and merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a number 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 legal requirements and guidelines, it may impact on your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 mandatory federal, state or local laws and regulations 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 cost-effective solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
In this article, we review a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your WordPress-based digital business.
Our WordPress Plugin Of The Month Is …
Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP admin user area and activate.
Easily Editable Legal Page Templates
Easily make changes to the built-in legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users with anything they need.
Additional plugin 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 complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the 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 For Any Website Purpose: As long as your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and ignore all other unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and covers your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically 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 displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, users have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s briefly review these areas …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can enter your business information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information you have entered into your User Profile fields inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the plugin’s compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Below is the complete 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your blog or website simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can edit and delete the compliance pages in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the 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. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides many 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 to include an icon for 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 Section: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. 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” WordPress 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display links to your compliance pages through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your site contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display 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 sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must 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 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 disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback users have written about 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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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin 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 the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content for adult viewers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist you if you experience any difficulties. You also get access to complete video training.
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 business hours (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single Edition – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you like. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost to purchase Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was current at the time this article was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the product author when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For demo videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that 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 fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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