One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring significant financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant in minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential part of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into most other advertising and merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not compliant, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing any business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that 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 many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this article.
In this article, you will learn about a simple WordPress plugin that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin containing over 20 customizable legal disclaimers for your digital business …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Templates
Easily edit the prebuilt compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated team to help you if you experience any issues.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used In All Niches: If your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any that are irrelevant.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to WP users. Here are just some of those:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin will display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and covers your business from non-compliance.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and will display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the plugin has been installed, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Location Details,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of the legal template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 compliance templates made 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 can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Create Pages” area …
(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 comes with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The icons are customizable. 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: Compliance Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily customize and delete the legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing 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
You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting which pages to include an icon for 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, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website contains content that may 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 terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section 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 displaying on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in the EU 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 customize the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(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” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Plugin Customers
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback plugin customers have provided for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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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
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages of your website.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you include content that is inappropriate for minors on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help users with anything they need. You also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your cost of purchasing.
Product Pricing
- Single User Licensing – Install the plugin on one of your own sites. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Can be installed on multiple domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Price details for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software retails for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For demo videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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