One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended 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 very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, 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 statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into a number of advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could face a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply 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 business become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this article.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based web presence.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website legally compliant:
Easy And Fast To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily edit the pre-built compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated team to help users if they experience any difficulties.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Templates: The 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 and a complete library of training videos is available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the legal page templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the compliance pages you need to include in your site and leave out unnecessary pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many unique features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to use in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If your site includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, 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 visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP address 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 automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor web browsers.
Using The Plugin
Once the plugin is installed, the plugin’s “Settings” area is added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business information can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate and display the information from your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can create legal pages for your site quite easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. 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: Legal Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can edit and delete the legal templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular premium themes (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays 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 to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on 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 immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and even record 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 visitors in the EU, you need to 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” 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 legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Feedback
Here are just some testimonials users have submitted for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content that is inappropriate for minors on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist you with anything you need. Users also get access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single User Licensing – Can be installed on one of your own sites. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own domains as you need. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price when this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 the law wherever your business is based.
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