One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken 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 significant financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into many leading advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being exploited by opportunistic online users.
At the very least, if your online presence is not compliant, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using online, and
- There are solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this post.
If you suspect that your website or blog falls short in terms of compliance, below we review a simple WordPress plugin that you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your web site instantly compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Compliance Bar Plugin is very easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Templates
You can easily modify the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WordPress visual editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits of using the plugin include:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a complete library of training videos is provided.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the built-in templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For Any Website Purpose: As long as your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you want to include in your site and leave out any unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area will be added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from 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 screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of your compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin last time we checked the 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
Creating compliance pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar 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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily edit and delete the legal disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” screen, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing 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
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, 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 main 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 icons on different pages, or to cover different uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme (e.g. 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 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 will display links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to be featured …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that restricts access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and wordings of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create an unlimited number of Pop Ups for different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing 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 your business is based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar 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 legal templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials From Plugin Customers
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin customers have provided for Compliance Bar:
”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)
Useful 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.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If you have adult content 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 dedicated support to help you with anything you need. Users also have access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% refund guarantee. If your edition 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 twice the cost of purchasing.
Product Pricing
- Single Site Personal License – Install the plugin on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on all domains that you own. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Information
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how-to” videos showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Get This Plugin
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, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: 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 of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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