One of the worst things that can happen to you as a website owner is to break the law.
Your website must comply with various laws, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial losses, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good 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 just minutes.
Is Your Site Legally Compliant?
As the cybersphere continues to grow at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s vital that you stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your digital presence is an integral aspect of your overall business strategy.
If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank will not let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites could suspend your web applications, and you will not be accepted into many leading advertising and merchant networks.
If your digital presence 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 you don’t make it clear to your visitors that your website complies with legal requirements and guidelines, it may impact on your visitors trust and confidence in doing any future business with you.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all third-party services require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here.
The purpose of this article is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business,
- How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be promoting or using in your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we review in this article.
In this article, we review a complete compliance and disclaimer solution for your online business.
Introducing …
Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a total compliance and disclaimer solution for your website …
More info: Compliance Bar Plugin
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:
Really Easy To Install
Compliance Bar Plugin installs like any plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Editable Page Templates
Easily modify the pre-built templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
24/7 Support
The plugin develop provides dedicated plugin support to help users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits of using the plugin include the following:
- Customized Legal Page Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Manuals: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use and an entire library of training videos is available.
- Use In All Countries: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that 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.
- Use On All WordPress Sites: If your website is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any that you don’t need.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin provides many great features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages using attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations on your pages. You can also upload your own icons.
- Display Sensitive Content – If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
- EU User 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 that notifies users and protects your business from non-compliance issues.
- Record And Store IP Addresses – The plugin records the IP addresses of your visitors for future 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 or blog, (even in the pop-ups).
- Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and will display mobile optimized icons automatically based on the mobile browser being used.
Features – Details
After installing and activating the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section is added to your WordPress dashboard.
Let’s briefly review these …
User Profile
There are a number of default categories in this section where you can enter your business details into input (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Website URL,” “Support Email,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
The Compliance Bar Plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile inside your legal pages …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Screen: Shortcodes – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required data has been input into the user profile fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” area includes a list of all of the plugin’s compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 legal pages available:
- 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 or blog can be easily done. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click ”Save” at the bottom of the “Create Pages” screen …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to 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 additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …
(Compliance Bar: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Pages
You can modify and delete the compliance page templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Page Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Notes
- Customizing 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 offers various options to customize the Compliance Bar, including where to position the bar, whether to show 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 multiple Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different areas of your website.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your website, even if you are using a specific 3rd-party theme (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme settings as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” page.
- Due to the smaller size of mobile device screens, there is a limit to the number of page icons you can display if you turn Mobile Settings “on.”
Once you have configured your Compliance Bar settings, it will display 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 to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to publish content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that blocks access to visitors who do not accept your site’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 for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site …
You can also specify a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set cookie durations to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time interval, 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 your business is based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …
The Compliance Bar plugin lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU User Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” section …
(EU Cookies Screen: 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” screen, lists all of your legal disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and receiving plugin updates …
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback 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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”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
Plugin Tips
Below are a few extra 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 of your website.
- Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published content for adult viewers, 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 dedicated 24/7 plugin support to assist you with anything you need. Plugin users also have access to video training.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 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 hrs (M – F), your purchase price will be refunded in double.
Product Price
- Single – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business License Edition – Can be installed on up to 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Professional License Edition – Install the plugin on multiple domains that you own. Install the plugin on all client sites as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Pricing details of Compliance Bar Plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the price when this article was written. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin seller when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Compliance Bar Plugin
Compliance Bar Plugin – Additional Info
Legal Pages Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal 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 to ensure that your site is fully compliant.
For a demo video showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
The Bottom Line
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.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering 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 is compliant with the law in your country or region.
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