One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking the law.
Your internet presence must comply with many laws and regulations, many of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring both 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 inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your digital presence is an integral aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into a number of advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if your business online is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business may be damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website is lacking in terms of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress sites you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
Learn more about the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your website instantly compliant:
Very Easy To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the pre-built compliance page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to help users.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a complete library of training videos is provided if users need assistance.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal page templates provided with 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 Any Website Purpose: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the templates you need to add to your site and ignore all other unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe 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 displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and protects your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate the templates 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 settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, users will have access to various settings.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where you can enter your business details into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert the information from your User Profile inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: 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” section lists all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 20 legal templates available:
- 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image 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 attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily customize and delete the legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing your legal pages 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, whether to display 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create an unlimited number of Compliance Bars to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme settings 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 attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If your website includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create a number of customized Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want 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 capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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” tab, lists all of your compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials plugin users have submitted for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you with anything you need. You also get access to an entire library of training videos.
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 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the purchasing price.
Plugin Price
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The price of Compliance Bar can vary, depending 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 not be the actual price charged by the software developer when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Plugin Information
Legal Pages Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal 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 for your peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Get The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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