One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your digital presence 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 good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into various other advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if you are not compliant, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
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 (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing online, and
- There are cost-effective solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, we review below a simple plugin for WordPress sites you may be very interested in using.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your website …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Use In No Time.
Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
Easily edit the prebuilt legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help you.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a complete library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Can Be Used 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 with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use For All Niches: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you want to include in your site and leave out unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in very little time.
- Display Attractive Icons – The plugin displays links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Content – If your site includes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the browser being used.
Compliance Bar Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, you will have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your business details into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: 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 plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of your compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page templates available:
- 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
You can easily create legal pages for your website by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of 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: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete your compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 displays links to your compliance pages using dynamic 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 you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited customized Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and 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 do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws …
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” tab …
(EU Cookies Section: Manage Settings – Screenshot 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” screen, lists all of your legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Here are a few of the testimonials customers have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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
Plugin Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have content that is considered inappropriate for underaged viewers on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to assist you if you experience any difficulties. You also have access to an entire set 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 hours (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single – Install the plugin on one domain that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing shown above was current at the time this article was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software 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 the latest pricing: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have 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 ”how to” videos showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our website. You must 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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