One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial losses, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into various other advertising or merchant networks.
If your online presence is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations 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 may be offering or endorsing online, and
- There are solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become compliant, such as the tool that we review in this article.
If your website or blog is lacking in aspects of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress websites that you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress websites and blogs with over 20 customizable legal disclaimers for your web presence …
Go here to learn more: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Ready To Use In Very Little Time
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin login and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Really Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the pre-built legal templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated support to help you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use In All Niches: If your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Just select the pages you want to add to your site and leave out all other irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to website owners. Below we have listed just some of those features:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your site’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 compliance laws. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your visitors and protects you from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Using The Plugin
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area is added to your WP backend.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business details can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information you have input into your User Profile fields inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 legal pages available to WordPress users:
- 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 or blog is a simple process. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image 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 can be changed. 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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily modify and delete your legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from 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 you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to appear …
PopUps
If your website includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and record 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 the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you manage the settings for compliance with EU User 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” area, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
User Feedback
Here are just some testimonials and comments that plugin customers have submitted for Compliance Bar:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are some useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish adult content on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated plugin support team to help you if you experience any problems. You also get access to an entire set of training videos.
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 (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Pricing
- Single User Licensing – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on 25 sites that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: The price of this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing above was correct at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions 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-driven websites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
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 wherever your business is based.
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