Compliance Bar – Legal Web Compliance Plugin For WordPress

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 intended to protect the rights of consumers, you’re breaking the law.

Being non-compliant puts you at risk of incurring serious financial losses and the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good 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 site legally compliant just minutes.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?

As the internet continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and the rules keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay informed about what’s happening and to make sure that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations, especially if your web presence is an essential aspect of your business strategy.

If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products on their network, PayPal may close down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and many other social networks could suspend your web apps, and you will not be allowed into various other advertising and merchant networks.

If your business online is not compliant, you could face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!

At the very least, if your web presence is not compliant, trust and confidence in your business could become an issue.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party websites require you to comply with their policies and guidelines!)

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website.

The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:

1. Your website may be subject to various legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws that govern your business (some of which you may probably not even be aware of),
2. How important it is to maintain compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or using online, and
3. There are easy-to-install solutions that can help your website become more compliant, such as the tool that we review below.

If you suspect that your website is falling short in terms of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.

Let’s Review …

Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Plugin Description

Compliance Bar Plugin is an easy-to-install plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs that contains over 20 customizable legal templates for your web presence …

More info: Compliance Bar Plugin

Plugin Benefits

Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:

Quick And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In No Time.

Compliance Bar Plugin installs like every plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin login and activate.

Easy-To-Edit Compliance Page Templates

Easily make changes to the prebuilt legal page templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the visual editor.

24/7 Plugin Support

Compliance Bar provides dedicated plugin support to help users if they experience any problems.

Additional benefits include the following:

• Customized Compliance Page Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
• Complete Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is available.
• Use Anywhere In The World: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if the built-in legal templates provided with 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 built with WordPress, you can use the plugin for every website purpose. Select only the types of disclaimers which pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any templates that are not required.

Compliance Bar Features

Compliance Bar provides a number of features to WP users. Here are just some:

• Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
• Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
• Display Restricted Content – If your site includes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
• EU Cookie Compliance – If you are based in the EU or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying users and covering your business from non-compliance.
• Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record and store your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
• Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes that populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
• Works On All Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor browsers.

Using Compliance Bar

Once you have installed the Compliance Bar plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section is added to your WordPress dashboard.

Let’s go through these briefly …

User Profile

There are a number of default fields in this area where you can enter your information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Email,” “Location Details,” “Refund Duration (Days),” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Phone Number,” etc.)

(Compliance Bar User Profile Section – Image source: plugin documentation)

The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to populate and display the information from your User Profile into your legal page templates …

(Compliance Bar Plugin User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image source: plugin documentation)

Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been input into the plugin settings fields, you can then access the other areas of the plugin.

Compliance Pages

The “Compliance Pages” screen includes a list of all of your pages …

(Compliance Bar: Compliance 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 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
• XXX Disclosure

You can create legal pages for your site quickly and easily by simply selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button on the “Create Pages” tab …

(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)

Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your site.

Compliance Bar Icons

The plugin comes with a default set of attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …

Icons are customizable. You can purchase additional icons from the plugin developer, or create/upload your own to match the style of your theme …

(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)

Edit / Delete Legal Templates

You can easily modify and delete your legal pages from the “Compliance Pages” area, just as you would any other page in WordPress …

(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Legal Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)

Tips

• Editing the compliance 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

You have many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying 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 front page, which pages the Compliance Bar will display in, mobile settings, and more …

(Compliance Bar Screen: Create Bar – Image source: plugin documentation)

Notes:

• You can create more than one Compliance Bar to show different icons on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses in other areas of your site.
• The plugin lets you display a Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using particular premium theme frameworks (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), where the home page is specifically configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a normal “static” 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 will display links to your legal using dynamic icon bar on your site …

You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to display your compliance icons …

PopUps

If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that restricts access to users who do not accept your terms or disclaimers.

The “Create Pop Up” screen lets you fully customize your pop ups …

(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)

You can create unlimited Pop Ups displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses throughout your website …

You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 sourced from plugin documentation)

EU Cookies

If your business is based in the EU 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 …

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” 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” section, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …

General Settings

The “General Settings” screen, gives you access to general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …

Testimonials From Users

Here are just a few of the testimonials customers have provided for the Compliance Bar plugin:

”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 Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)

Compliance Bar Plugin – Useful Tips

Here are some extra ways to use Compliance Bar:

• Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
• Display compliance icons on specific pages of your site only.
• End refund disputes by clearly spelling out your refund terms before purchase.
• If your website contains adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.

Support

Compliance Bar provides users with dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you if you experience any difficulties. Plugin users also have access to an entire set of training videos.

Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your copy of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund twice the amount of the cost of purchasing.

Plugin Pricing

• Single Edition – Can be installed on a single domain. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
• Business – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
• Professional License Edition – Can be installed on all domains that you own. Install the plugin on any client site for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.

Please Note: The price of the Compliance Bar product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price when this review was written. This 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 purchasing.

Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information: Compliance Bar – WordPress Compliance Plugin

Additional Information

Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get advice from a qualified legal expert in your area to ensure that your site is fully compliant.

For a demo video of the plugin in action, including installation instructions and tutorials, FAQs, customer help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.

Get This Plugin

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 complete details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Note: Once again, we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice here. 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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Disclaimer: We have no direct association with WordPress, Automattic, or any of the WordPress-related products reviewed on this site. We may derive an affiliate commission from purchases of any products mentioned on this site. All images remain the copyright of their respective owners and comply with all license terms and agreements of use.

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