One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to receive a notice of legal action as a result of having broken the law.
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 financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so easily and inexpensively?
In this article, we review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site compliant just minutes.
Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules of the game are constantly changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, digital marketplaces like ClickBank will not allow you to list your digital products on their network, PayPal could shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook could suspend your applications, and you will not be allowed into many other advertising or merchant networks.
If your business online is not compliant, you could end up facing a whole range of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, it could affect your visitors trust and confidence in doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party websites require you to comply with their terms of use!)
Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website could be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
- The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your site become compliant, such as the tool that we review below.
In this article, you will learn about a total compliance and disclaimer solution for a WordPress-based digital presence.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress-driven websites that includes over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your online presence …
Go here to learn more about the plugin: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like any other plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Page Templates Are Easy To Edit
Easily make changes to the pre-built compliance templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated support to assist you if you experience any issues.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Customized Legal Templates: Compliance Bar creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use - a full library of training videos is provided.
- Use In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the default legal templates provided in Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
- Can Be Used For All Website Purposes: As long as your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any pages that you don’t need.
Compliance Bar Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides a number of features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Show Attractive Icons – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Restricted Information – If you plan to show content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that force users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User Cookie Compliance – If you do business in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies your users and covers your site from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Addresses – The plugin can record and store your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcode Driven – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
- Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” area is added to your WordPress admin area.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where your business details can be input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Location Details,” “Niche Market,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to insert and display the information inside your legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been input into the user profile fields, users can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area contains all of your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the plugin website, there were over 22 legal 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
- XXX Disclosure
Creating legal pages for your website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” on the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of icons for referencing your legal pages …
The 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 Plugin: Compliance Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can edit and delete the legal disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin notifies 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 position, 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 front 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 more than one Compliance Bar to display different icons on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific premium theme framework (e.g. 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” 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 configured your Compliance Bar settings, it displays links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …
You have full control over the location on your pages where you would like the compliance bar to be featured …
PopUps
If your website publishes content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or 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 – Image source: plugin documentation)
You can create multiple Pop Ups 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 the Pop Ups to display as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations 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 Section: IP Log Details – Image source: plugin documentation)
EU Cookies
If you do business in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law …
The 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” area …
(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” tab, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials From Plugin Customers
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments users have written about Compliance Bar:
”When I got my hands on Compliance Bar, I knew I needed help to be compliant, but I had no idea how much danger I was in, nor did I know all of the different things I needed to be compliant. Once I installed Compliance Bar, I was able to very quickly add all the items I needed to ensure I didn’t end up getting fined by various agencies, or have my site pulled from Google. The best part is that getting it all set up took only minutes, and I know that I am far safer than I was. Compliance Bar is one of the best plugins I have used in a long time.” 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)
Useful Tips
Here are a few additional ways to use Compliance Bar:
- Protecting against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Ending refund disputes by clearly spelling out 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 view your content.
Product Support
Plugin Developers provide users with dedicated plugin support to help users if they experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to an entire library of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% refund 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 Cost
- Single – Can be installed on 1 of your own domains. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business – Can be installed on 25 domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Can be installed on multiple domains that you own. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of the Compliance Bar Plugin software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the product retails for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Compliance Bar – Additional Info
Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal page templates have been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For ”how-to” videos showing how the plugin works, 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-driven sites. We recommend downloading and installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar Plugin – WP Website Compliance Plugin
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 to ensure that your website is compliant with all legal requirements wherever your business is based.
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