One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of breaking a law or regulation.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumer rights, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring serious financial loss, but also 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 inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website legally compliant just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vital that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is an integral part of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you will not be allowed into most other advertising or merchant networks.
You may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to litigation.
At the very least, if your online business is not in compliance, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to remain compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are plugins for WordPress users that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this post.
If you suspect that your web site is lacking in areas of compliance, we review below a simple WordPress plugin you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits Of Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your web site legally compliant:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
Compliance Bar Plugin is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Compliance Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily make changes to the built-in compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Plugin Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated plugin support to assist you with anything you need.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Compliance Page Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - an entire library of training videos is available if you need assistance.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in 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.
- Can Be Used For Any Website Purpose: As long as your site is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any templates that you don’t need.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers many great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icons – Compliance Bar will display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Show Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your website from non-compliance.
- Records & Stores IP Addresses – Compliance Bar can record the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – 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, (even in the popups).
- Mobile Friendly – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Features – Details
Once you have installed the plugin, you will then have access to various settings.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your information can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Desk URL,” “Company Phone Number,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to populate the information inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the plugin settings fields, users can then access the other plugin areas.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available to plugin 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
- Adult Content Disclosure
You can easily and quickly create compliance pages for your blog or website simply by selecting checkboxes and clicking ”Save” on the “Create Pages” tab …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons can be changed. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your site’s design …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily customize and delete your legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Editing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. pages created before installing the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, etc. …
(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses in different areas of your site.
- The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 through dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance icons to show …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that blocks access to users who do not accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover different uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, 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 Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
The 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 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 disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are just a few of the testimonials and comments plugin users have submitted for Compliance Bar:
”I got a chance to review the Compliance Bar plugin…WOW!! I have to say that its definitely one of the most NECESSARY, yet easiest to use plugin’s to hit the scene in a while. Very Solid Product. Great job Anton & team!” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are a few additional ways you can use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimize refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If you publish content that is inappropriate for minors on your website, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated team to assist users if they experience any issues. Users also get access to full video training.
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 hours (M – F), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on one of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own sites. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License – Can be installed on multiple of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The price of Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was correct at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.
For ”how-to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Install The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-powered websites and blogs. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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