One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the digital realm continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a significant part of your overall 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 will not approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be allowed into most leading advertising or affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably affected.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing on your website, and
- There are cost-effective solutions that can help your business become compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this article.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your web site instantly compliant:
Easy Installation
Compliance Bar installs like any regular WP plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP admin login and activate.
Editable Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the built-in compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to help users.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is available if users need assistance.
- 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 templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: If your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the pages you need to include in your site and leave out unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many unique features to WP users. Below we have listed just some of those features:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Show Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If your website publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – 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. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your business from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including 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 visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, users will get access to a number of settings pages.
Let’s briefly review these settings …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can enter your business details into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically populate the information from your User Profile into your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of your compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create legal pages for your blog or website by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Page Templates
You can customize and delete the legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance 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, icon size, selecting 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, 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 a range of uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using particular premium themes (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 compliance pages through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance bar to display …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of 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 throughout your website …
You can also specify 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 store the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you edit 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 Section: 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” area, lists all of your compliance page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Plugin Customers
Here are some of the testimonials and comments that plugin customers have written about the Compliance Bar plugin:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site includes content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need. Users also have 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 your purchasing price.
Software Price
- Single Site License – Install the plugin on 1 site that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
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 demo videos of the plugin, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on our 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 in your country or region.
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