One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website isn’t compliant with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of incurring financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the digital realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and rules keep changing, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is an essential component of your business strategy.
If you do not display certain legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t allow you to list your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you will not be allowed into many advertising or affiliate merchant networks.
You could also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to expensive litigation.
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their 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 numerous legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws and regulations that govern your business,
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or using online, and
- There are inexpensive solutions that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we discuss below.
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-driven sites that provides a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online presence.
Announcing …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is a simple and easy-to-use WordPress plugin containing over twenty customizable legal page templates for your digital presence …
More info: Compliance Bar
Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your site legally compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any other plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin login and activate.
Easy To Edit Page Templates
You can easily edit the built-in compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG content editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin developers provide a dedicated support team to help users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits include:
- Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to make sure that the 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 For All Website Purposes: If your website or blog is built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Just select the compliance pages you need to add to your site and ignore any unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar provides a number of features to website owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Display Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Restricted Content – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your website’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe 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 displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers you from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records the IP address of your visitors for future reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your website, (including the popups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the web browser being used.
Using Compliance Bar Plugin
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WP admin area.
Let’s go through these settings briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where you can enter your business details into entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” “Contact Phone,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the information from your User Profile in your page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other plugin section.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area lists all of the plugin’s legal pages …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Below is the full list of legal templates made available by the plugin when we last checked the website:
- 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 is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” in the “Compliance Pages” area …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added inside your “Pages” section.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The Compliance Bar icons are customizable. 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: Legal Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily edit and delete your legal pages in the “Compliance Pages” area, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing 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 many 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 to include an icon for 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 Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is specifically 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 device screens, 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 legal through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to display the compliance bar …
PopUps
If your website contains content that may 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 or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” area gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different sections of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration 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 source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you are based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance laws …
The Compliance Bar plugin 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 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 legal pages and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback users have written about Compliance Bar:
”One of the most annoying parts about building out a site is to make sure it complies with the law. I always leave this part to the end because its painfully dry and boring and frankly I always just wished their was an easier way. Then I came across Compliance Bar and its literally the most versitile and brilliant plugin I have ever used. All my pages meet FTC requirements now and all I had to do was press a button! Anton and Jon..you guys friggen rock — 1000% highly recommend this!!” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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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)
Plugin Tips
Below are some extra ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages only.
- End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site contains content that is considered inappropriate for underaged viewers, 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 users with anything they need. Plugin users also have access to video training manuals.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your cost of purchase.
Software Cost
- Single License Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own sites. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business Edition – Install the plugin on 25 of your own sites. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Can be installed on all as many of your own domains as you like. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for the Compliance Bar software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price shown above was correct at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product seller when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Information
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal page templates have already been reviewed and approved by lawyers. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For demo videos showing plugin usage, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
We Recommend
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 more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way of ensuring that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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