One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your website or blog has to comply with various laws and regulations, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering significant financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant aspect of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into a range of other advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with legal requirements and regulations, it may impact on 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!)
Legal 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 various legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws 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 are promoting or endorsing on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
If you suspect that your website or blog is lacking in terms of compliance, we discuss below a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites that you will probably be interested in knowing more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress users that includes over 20 customizable compliance pages for your online presence …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Implement. Ready To Use In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
You can easily modify the built-in compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to help you with anything you need.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in legal page 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 Website Purposes: If your website or blog runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that you don’t need.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to site owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Content – If you plan to display content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your site from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records and stores the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates 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 individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business information can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of template pages made available by the plugin when we last checked the website:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. 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: Legal Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can modify and delete the compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal templates 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying which pages to include an icon for in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(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 a multitude of uses in other sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device 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 legal through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to appear …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your 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 more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, 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 source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business 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 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 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” screen, lists all of your compliance disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
User Feedback
Below are a couple of the testimonials customers have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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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 Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website includes adult content, 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 support team to assist users. You also have access to full video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single User Personal License – Install the plugin on a single site. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of the Compliance Bar plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged 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 here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including help documentation 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 sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice in this article. 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 in your country or region.
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