One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring significant financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the cybersphere continues to grow 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 compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an essential part of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook could suspend your web apps, and you won’t be allowed into a number of other advertising and merchant networks.
If your web presence is not in compliance, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, 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 and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with the laws that govern your business,
- The importance of remaining compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing in your website, and
- There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress-powered websites that provides a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly legally compliant:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Compliance Bar installs like any regular WordPress plugin. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin account and activate.
Easily Editable Templates
Easily make changes to the pre-built compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the visual editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to assist users if they experience any issues.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Use For All Website Purposes: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any pages that are irrelevant.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to web site owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), you 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 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 that notifies users and protects you from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store 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 uses shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Works On Mobile Devices – The plugin has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once you have installed the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WP backend.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where you can enter your information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information from your User Profile fields into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section contains all of the templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Below is the complete list of template pages 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
You can create legal pages for your blog or website quite easily simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily edit and delete the legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed 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, image size, selecting 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” WordPress page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile screens, 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 complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If your site publishes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), you can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create unlimited Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying 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 source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
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” section …
(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 disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials From Plugin Customers
Below are a few of the testimonials plugin users have published about 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)
Useful Tips
Here are a few useful ways to 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.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you have adult content on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to help users with anything they need. Users also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 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 hours (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Price
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on one site that you own. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Install the plugin on multiple as many of your own sites as you need. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly 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 of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
What We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. You must 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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