One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your internet presence has to comply with numerous federal, state and even local laws and regulations, some of which you are probably not even aware of.
Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and cost-effective WordPress solution that can help make your website fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues growing at breakneck speed and the rules of the game constantly change, it’s vitally important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your web presence is a fundamental component of your overall business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as 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 withhold payment of your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into various leading advertising and affiliate marketing networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business may seriously diminish.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to numerous legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may probably 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 on your website, and
- There are solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the solution that we review in this post.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance & disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based site.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress users that includes over twenty customizable legal disclaimer templates for your digital presence …
For more details go here: Compliance Bar
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
Compliance Bar installs like every WP plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Legal Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
You can easily modify the pre-built legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the visual content editor.
24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to assist you if you experience any problems.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Compliance Pages: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and a full library of training videos is provided.
- Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to ascertain if the 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 In All Niches: As long as your website is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for any website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that you don’t require.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many features to site owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Show Visually Appealing Icons – The plugin displays links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations on your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Show Sensitive Information – If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar notifying your visitors and covering your business from non-compliance issues.
- Records And 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 didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (even in the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices or tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on visitor mobile browsers.
Features – Details
Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area gets added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s go through these briefly …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this area where your business details can be entered (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Registered Business Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information in your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of your pages …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Here’s the complete list of legal templates made available by the Compliance Bar plugin when we last 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 easily create compliance pages for your website or blog simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal 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 default 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 theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can easily customize and delete your compliance templates from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing the compliance 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
You have various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to display links or icon images, background colors and images, image size, selecting 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 – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes:
- You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (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 “regular” 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 using a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult, etc.), you can display popups that restricts access to users who do not accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site …
You can also specify a delay time to prevent a Pop Up from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and store 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 Cookie law …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you manage 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” tab, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” section, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …
Feedback From Users
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have published about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”I wanted to reach out & say Compliance Bar is a truly amazing product for keeping my online marketing efforts on the right side of the internet laws. Not only does it look fantastic on my sites, it is also intuitive and robustly powerful. It is packed full of features to allow me the flexibility to control exactly what my visitors need to see and know” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips
Below are some useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your site published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Plugin Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated support to help you if you experience any problems. Users also get access to a complete library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, thirty 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 business hours (Monday to Friday), the plugin developers will refund twice the cost of purchase.
Product Cost
- Single License Edition – Can be installed on a single site. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on twenty-five domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional Edition – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you need. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the product website 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 Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Additional Plugin Information
Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assert on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
In Conclusion
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. 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: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article. You must 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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