One of the worst things that can happen to any website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking 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 suffering both 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 review a simple and very inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a fundamental component of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your website (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your apps, and you will not be accepted into a number of other advertising and merchant networks.
If your business online is not in compliance, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you are not compliant, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing online, and
- There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress users that can help your website become compliant, such as the plugin that we review in this post.
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in aspects of compliance, below we discuss a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your digital presence …
For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to make your site instantly compliant:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Use In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every WP plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
You can easily modify the pre-built templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to assist users if they experience any problems.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and 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 templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever your business is located.
- Use For Every Website Purpose: If your website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the templates you need to add to your site and leave out irrelevant pages.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many great features to WP users. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be positioned anywhere in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – 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 plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – The plugin records the IP address of your visitors for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that automatically populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features – Details
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, you will then get access to a number of settings.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business details can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) data has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the full list of templates made available by the plugin when we last checked the 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
Creating compliance pages for your website or blog can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. 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: Compliance Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Pages
You can easily customize and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify 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 many 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 main page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and offset distance …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot 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 in different areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), 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 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 displays links to your compliance pages using a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your site …
You can also specify 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 Section: 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 need to 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 Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” area …
(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” screen, 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 update notifications …
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that users have written about Compliance Bar Plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
***
“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are some useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons only on specific pages of your site.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you include content that is inappropriate for underaged viewers on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Product Support
Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated plugin support to assist users with anything they need. Users also have access to a complete library of training videos.
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 business hours (M – F), your money will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single User Personal License – Install the plugin on a single site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on all as many of your own domains as you like. Install the plugin on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing above was correct when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin 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 current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support 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-driven sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. 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.
***