One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to be on the wrong side of the law.
If your website doesn’t comply with laws designed to protect consumers, you’re breaking the law.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering serious financial loss, but also the loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and your business reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?
In this post, we review a simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant just minutes.
Does Your Website Comply With The Law?
As the cybersphere continues growing at breakneck speed and rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your website (e.g. terms of service, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many sites such as 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 freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your apps, and you won’t be accepted into various leading advertising or merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could also face a multitude of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, without making it clear to your visitors that your site complies with legal requirements and regulations, expect visitor trust and confidence in your business to be irrepairably damaged.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their policies!)
Legal 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 may be subject to certain legal requirements in accordance with compulsory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- The importance of maintaining compliance with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing on your website, and
- There are solutions that can help your site become more compliant, such as the tool that we discuss in this post.
If you suspect that your web site lacks in areas of compliance, below we review a simple plugin for WordPress users that you should know more about.
Today We Review …
Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress users that includes over 20 customizable legal pages for your digital presence …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar Plugin
Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Compliance Bar Plugin to instantly make your web site compliant:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every plugin. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Easy-To-Edit Page Templates
Easily edit the default templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu using the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated 24/7 Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides a dedicated team to help users with anything they need.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Customized Compliance Pages: The Compliance Bar plugin creates your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Video Training Library: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is available.
- Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult a qualified legal representative to make sure that the built-in legal templates provided with Compliance Bar are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin anywhere in the world.
- Use In All Niches: If your website or blog is powered by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the pages you want to add to your site and ignore the unnecessary pages.
Features
Compliance Bar Plugin offers a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these features:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in no time.
- Display Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
- Display Sensitive Information – If your site publishes content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that require users to accept your 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 Cookie law. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and protects your website from non-compliance.
- Record And Store IP Acceptance – The plugin can record the IP addresses of your visitors for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they didn’t.
- Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes that populate legal pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and can display mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor web browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
After installing and activating the plugin, a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured is added to your WordPress backend.
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 entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Business Address,” “Company Phone Number,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Compliance Bar uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically populate the information inside your legal templates …
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Once the minimum required information has been entered into the user profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.
Compliance Pages
The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of your compliance template pages …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Last time we checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance 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 compliance pages for your blog or website can be easily done. Just select the check boxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button in the “Create Pages” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Templates – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added under the “Pages” section of your site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin comes with a built-in set of attractive 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 site’s design …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Compliance Page Templates
You can easily edit and delete the legal page templates from the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical WordPress page …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)
Tips
- Editing the compliance pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin will notify you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. legal 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 show 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 Section: 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 a range of uses in other areas of your website.
- The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme (e.g. 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” 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 will display links to your compliance pages through a visually appealing icon bar on your site …
You have complete control over the location on your pages where you would like to feature the compliance icons …
PopUps
If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display popups that restricts access to users who do not accept your site’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” section lets you fully customize your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Screen: Create Pop Up – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website …
You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display immediately, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, and even record 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 …
Compliance Bar lets you edit the settings for compliance with EU Cookies requirements, including the wording of your notification message and link text in the “EU Cookies” tab …
(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” section, lists all of your legal disclaimers and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” tab, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
Testimonials
Here are just some testimonials and comments that plugin customers have provided for Compliance Bar Plugin:
”WOW” Shon Chris – Director (JV Peer Group)
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”I Highly Recommend Compliance Bar” Tony Grant (Portfolio Sports)
Plugin Tips
Here are some additional ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:
- Protection against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
- Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before customers purchase.
- If your website published adult content, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.
Plugin Support
Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated support team to assist 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 no-risk, 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 business hours (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of the purchase price.
Software Cost
- Single User Licensing – Install the plugin on a single site that you own. Price = $47 (Normally $127)
- Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to twenty-five of your own domains. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Install the plugin on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Price = $97.00.
Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar Plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the site 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
Additional Plugin Info
Legal Templates Approved By Lawyers – The plugin developers state on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get professional advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your own peace of mind.
For a demo video showing plugin usage, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.
Download The Plugin
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress websites. We recommend installing this WordPress plugin if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Compliance Bar – Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law wherever your business is based.
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