One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your website or blog has to comply with a whole set of federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of 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 easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your online presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a number of other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and guidelines, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this article.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based online presence.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog compliant:
Easy & Fast To Install
Compliance Bar installs like every plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin user login and activate.
Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
Easily modify the prebuilt compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated support team to help users.
Additional benefits of this plugin include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For Every Website Purpose: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that you don’t require.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin will display links to your compliance 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 publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your site from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for 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 populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured gets added to your WP dashboard.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your business details into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate the information you have entered into your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance templates available, covering all areas of compliance:
- 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
Creating compliance pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can customize and delete your legal templates in the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- 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. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to show 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 main 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 show different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. 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 device screens, 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 displays links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and store 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 Europe 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 manage 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 – Image sourced from 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 legal 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 just some testimonials and feedback customers have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below 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 only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website contains adult content, 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 a dedicated team to help you if you experience any problems. Plugin users also have access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), your money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on twenty-five sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was current when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim 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 legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For demo videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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