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 designed to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial loss, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we look at a simple and easy-to-use solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules are constantly changing, it’s vital to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your site remains compliant, especially if your online presence is a fundamental component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy policy, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and many other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into most leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could also face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your digital presence is not in compliance, it may affect your visitors trust and confidence about doing business with you in the future.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to be compliant 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 easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we discuss in this article.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-powered sites that provides a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online business.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence …
Learn more about this plugin here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website compliant:
Fast And Simple To Install And Configure. Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Editable Legal Page Templates
You can easily modify the default compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WYSIWYG content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Customized Legal Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and an entire library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the default legal page templates provided in Compliance Bar 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 website or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Just select the templates you need to include in your site and leave out the irrelevant pages.
Features
Compliance Bar offers a number of features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – The plugin displays links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Restricted Information – If your site publishes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your website from non-compliance issues.
- Records And Stores IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes that automatically 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 All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once the Compliance Bar plugin has been installed, you will then have access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.
Let’s review these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your information into input (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Contact Phone,” “Market Niche,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Screen – Image source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses shortcodes to insert and display the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile fields in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other plugin screens.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section includes a list of all of the compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of template pages made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last checked the site:
- 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
Creating legal pages for your website or blog is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Icons – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily modify and delete your legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” tab, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your 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. pages created before you installed the plugin).
Compliance Bar
The plugin settings area provides various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, selecting 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, and more …
(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create unlimited Compliance Bars to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (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 “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 through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature your compliance icons …
PopUps
If your website contains content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and wordings of 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 other sections of your website …
You can also specify 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 displaying again within a specific time period, 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 you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements …
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” section …
(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” screen, lists all of your compliance disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials customers have submitted regarding Compliance Bar:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
***
”You wouldn’t drive a car around without insurance…so don’t RISK your online business by neglecting a simple, but important detail: website compliance. Grab your copy of Compliance Bar & protect yourself today!” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)
Compliance Bar Plugin Tips
Here are some additional ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website includes content for adults only, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Compliance Bar Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to assist users if they experience any problems. Users also get access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your edition of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (Monday to Friday), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Software Pricing
- Single Edition – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License – Install the plugin on 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer Edition – Install the plugin on all as many of your own domains as you need. Can be installed on all client sites as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: The cost of purchasing Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price at the time this content was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software developer when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
The Bottom Line
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites and blogs. We recommend downloading and installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Important: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website is compliant with all legal requirements in your country or region.
***