One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is an essential component of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal could close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites could suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into many advertising and affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to legal action.
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your web properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress users that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
If you suspect that your website falls short in aspects of compliance, below we review a simple plugin for WordPress users you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Legal Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your digital business …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to make your website instantly compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin is quite easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Editable Page Templates
Easily edit the prebuilt legal page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is provided if you need help.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the compliance pages you want to add to your site and ignore unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar provides many great features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some of these features:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, dating, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering you from non-compliance issues.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records and stores your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor browsers.
Plugin Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, users 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 categories in this section where you can enter your business information into entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Niche Area,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile fields inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your compliance pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked their site:
- 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can easily create legal pages for your site by simply selecting check boxes and clicking ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
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 Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Templates
You can edit and delete your legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the compliance templates 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, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, specifying 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image 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 sections of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific 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” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to show …
PopUps
If you plan to display content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that require users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other sections of your website …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying again within a specific time interval, and even record the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Screen: IP Log Details – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
Compliance Bar lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” screen …
(EU Cookies Screen: Manage Settings – Screenshot 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 templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials plugin customers have published about Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Below are a few extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website contains content that is considered inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to help you. Plugin users also have access to an entire set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty 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 (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Install the plugin on multiple of your own sites. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost to purchase the Compliance Bar product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product seller when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by lawyers. 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 showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
We Recommend
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.
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