One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial losses, 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 look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into most advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
If your website is not compliant, you could end up facing a multitude 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 website complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be seriously diminished.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance & disclaimer plugin for a WordPress-based online presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Installation Is Easy & Simple
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any regular plugin. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
Easily edit the pre-built legal templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to assist you if you experience any problems.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the legal templates provided with 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 website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that are unnecessary.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section gets added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically populate the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the compliance page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked their website:
- 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
You can create compliance pages for your website quite easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Create Pages” section …
(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 default set of 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: Legal Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete your compliance disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- 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. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides 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 home page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (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 “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile 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 will display links to your compliance pages through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website publishes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover various uses in other sections of your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time period, 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 Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The plugin lets you manage 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 – 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 edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Below are just a few of the testimonials that customers have provided for Compliance Bar 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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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Plugin Tips
Here are a few extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before 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.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated support to assist you if you experience any issues. Users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your cost of purchase.
Product Price
- Single Site Licensing – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing the Compliance Bar software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product is selling for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin 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 Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal 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 ”how-to” videos showing how the plugin works, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer 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 and blogs. We recommend downloading and 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 Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: 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 of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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