One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws intended to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial loss, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay on top of what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your online presence is an essential component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you will not be accepted into a range of advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to being slapped with a lawsuit.
At the very least, if you are not compliant, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that 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 laws and regulations 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 are offering or using on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this article.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress sites that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your site.
Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a simple plugin for WordPress users that includes over twenty customizable compliance templates for your site …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Fast And Easy Installation
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other WP plugin. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your administrator section and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
Easily modify the pre-built templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support Team
The plugin developers provide dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist users.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Full Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a complete library of training videos is provided if you need assistance.
- 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 page 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 On All WordPress Sites: If your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar provides many great features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Information – 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 pop-ups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance laws. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar 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, (even in the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Features – Details
Once the plugin is installed, the plugin’s “Settings” screen will be added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s briefly review these pages …
User Profile
There are a number of default fields in this area where your business information can be input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile fields into your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 20 compliance 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
- XXX Disclosure
You can create compliance pages for your website or blog quickly and easily by simply selecting checkboxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to your “Pages” section.
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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily customize and delete the legal page templates in the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing the compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, image 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 Section: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is 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 devices, 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 will display links to your legal through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like your compliance icons to display …
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.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms or 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 displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in other sections of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, and capture the IP addresses of visitors who accept your terms and disclaimers for future reference …
(Pop Ups Section: IP Log Details – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are 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 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 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” area, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin 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 – Useful Tips
Here are a few useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your website only.
- Reduce refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content that is inappropriate for minors on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help you if you experience any issues. Users also get access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back 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), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Product Cost
- Single – Can be installed on 1 site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Can be installed on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: The cost of purchasing the Compliance Bar software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this article was published. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin author when you visit the product site 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 – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Compliance Bar – Additional Information
Templates Reviewed 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 strongly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For ”how to” videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install This Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no 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 is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
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