One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to break the law.
Your digital presence must comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, some of which you may not be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering both financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and 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 web presence is a fundamental aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party 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 freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into many leading advertising or merchant networks.
Plus, you could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your online properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, visitors may lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with compulsory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are easy solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable compliance pages for your web presence …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Easy Installation
Compliance Bar installs like any other plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin user login and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
Easily modify the default templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to help you if you experience any difficulties.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the default legal page templates provided with 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 or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you want to include in your site and ignore any unnecessary pages.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar provides many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just some of those:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU 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. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and protects you from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store the IP addresses of your visitors for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes that automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the plugin has been installed, you will get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to dynamically populate and display the information in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the plugin’s templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the website:
- About Us
- AdSense Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreements
- Affiliate Disclosure Statement
- 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 compliance pages for your website quickly and easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – 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 comes with a built-in 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can easily modify and delete the compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing the legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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 Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific WordPress theme framework (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 devices, 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 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 the compliance icons to appear …
PopUps
If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize 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 different uses throughout your site …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want 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 capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law …
Compliance Bar 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” area …
(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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Testimonials From Customers
Here are some of the testimonials and feedback plugin users have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”If you are like me, you maybe have quite a few WordPress sites, all needing attention and most importantly, all needing to be on the right side of the law! I’ve tried several legal pages plugins and in pretty much every case, they let me down. They simply cause more work than they solve.To me, the answer should be simple. It should work and it should let me get on with building my site. After all, I know I NEED to do this stuff, but hey, I don’t really WANT to! So, for me, I don’t want those plugins that cause more work than they solve. Simple eh? Well now it is because Anton & John have just created this baby that is the answer to my needs. The Compliance Bar Plugin does what I need it to do then lets me get on with my empire building…Perfect!” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to assist you if you experience any issues. Users also have access to complete video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back 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 double the purchase price.
Product Cost
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on all sites that you own. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Price details for Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – 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 highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered sites. 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 Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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