One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is an integral part of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social networks could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into most advertising or merchant networks.
If your website is not in compliance, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you are not in compliance, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using online, and
- There are inexpensive plugins for WordPress users that can help your site become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer plugin for your online business.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your web presence …
To learn more about this plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every other plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP admin account and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the built-in templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to help you with anything you need.
Some 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.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - 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 make sure that 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 On All WordPress Sites: If your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of features to site owners. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your users and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores 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 otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this screen where your information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” 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 plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 20 compliance page templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:
- 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 create legal pages for your blog or website quickly and easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default 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: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete the compliance disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create several Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, 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 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 displays links to your compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force 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 Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses in different sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The plugin lets you customize 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 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” tab, lists all of your compliance disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify 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 …
Feedback From Users
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin customers have written about Compliance Bar:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Useful Tips
Here are a few extra ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains content for adult readers, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 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 your purchasing price.
Software Pricing
- Single – Install the plugin on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you want. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Price details for the Compliance Bar software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software author 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
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin 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.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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