One of the worst things that can happen to a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
Your internet presence must comply with a whole set of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious financial losses and the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your good reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social networks will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into most advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits or legal action.
At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your digital properties comply with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice here.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with the laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of being compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using on your website, and
- There are easy solutions for WordPress users that can help your site become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this article.
If you suspect that your website lacks in terms of compliance, we discuss below a simple WordPress plugin that you should know more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence …
To learn more about the plugin go here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast Installation
Compliance Bar installs like any WP plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Easy To Edit Legal Page Templates
You can easily make changes to the prebuilt legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users with anything they need.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the default legal templates provided with the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: As long as your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the pages you want to include in your site and ignore the irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – The plugin will display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site includes content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcodes – The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Using The Plugin
Once the Compliance Bar plugin is installed, you will then get access to a number of settings.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this section where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields into your page templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance page templates available:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your website can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page 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 default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
Icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily modify and delete your compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing your compliance templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
You have 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 should be included 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 offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using particular theme frameworks (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your compliance pages using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to display …
PopUps
If your website has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” screen 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 various uses in different areas of your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 your business is based in the EU 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 Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize 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 – 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 disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit 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 …
User Testimonials
Here are just some testimonials users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
***
”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you have content for adults only on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help users. You also have access to a complete set 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 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double your cost of purchasing.
Product Pricing
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single domain. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current pricing when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing information: Compliance Bar Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
***