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 doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of suffering serious 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 post, we review a simple and inexpensive WordPress solution that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?
As the digital realm continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant aspect of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your web apps, and you won’t be accepted into various other advertising and merchant networks.
Plus, you may 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 web properties comply with all legal requirements and regulations, 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 policies and guidelines!)
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 could be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using on your website, and
- There are inexpensive plugins for WordPress users that can help your business become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your web presence.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Compliance Plugin
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a total compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business …
To learn more about this plugin go here: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to make your website or blog instantly compliant:
Ready To Use In No Time
Compliance Bar is very easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily edit the prebuilt templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated Support
The plugin develop provides a dedicated support team to help users.
Additional benefits of using this plugin include the following:
- Customized Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: 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.
- Can Be Used For All Niches: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore those that are irrelevant.
Compliance Bar Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many unique features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your pages. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to publish content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies visitors and protects your business from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar 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).
- Works On Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the browser being used.
Plugin Features – Details
Once the plugin has been installed, the plugin’s “Settings” screen gets added to your WordPress backend.
Let’s review these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this screen where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Refund Period,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information in your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the compliance templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the plugin last time we checked their website:
- 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 legal pages for your blog or website quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Compliance Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from 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 attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Template Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can edit and delete your legal disclaimers from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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 installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying 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 more …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create multiple Compliance Bars to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in different sections of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular WordPress themes (e.g. Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is configured through the theme settings 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 will display links to your compliance pages through a visually attractive icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance bar …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” page gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration 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 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 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 Section: Manage Settings – Image sourced from 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 compliance pages and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)
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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)
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are a few useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
- If you publish content for adults only on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist you. Users also get access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice your cost of purchase.
Plugin Cost
- Single User Personal License – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The price of Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product is being retailed for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the product site and there may be 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 Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin in action, including help documentation 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 websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. 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 in your country or region.
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