Compliance Bar – Legal Web Compliance Plugin For WordPress

One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.

Your website or blog has to comply with many federal, state and even local laws and regulatory guidelines, some of which you may probably not even be aware of.

Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering significant financial costs, but also the cost to your reputation. Why risk your money and your good 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 compliant just minutes.

Is Your Website Legally Compliant?

As the cybersphere continues to grow at an extraordinary rate and rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legal, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your business strategy.

If there are no legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, legal disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites like Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products for sale, PayPal may close down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook will suspend your applications, and you won’t be allowed into various other advertising and affiliate merchant networks.

If your website is not compliant, you could face a whole range 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 online properties comply with legal requirements and regulations, trust and confidence in your business could be irrepairably.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, almost all 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)

Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we cannot offer legal advice in this article.

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

1. Your website could be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory laws that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
2. How important it is to be compliant with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are promoting or endorsing online, and
3. There are plugin-based solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your website become compliant, such as the tool that we review in this article.

If your website or blog falls short in areas of compliance, here is a simple plugin for WordPress users that you will probably be very interested in knowing more about.

Let’s Review …

Compliance Bar Plugin – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Plugin Description

Compliance Bar is an easy-to-install and simple-to-use plugin for WordPress websites containing over twenty customizable compliance page templates for your digital business …

For more details go here: Compliance Bar Plugin

Compliance Bar Plugin Benefits

Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your website or blog legally compliant:

Be Up And Running In Minutes

Compliance Bar Plugin installs just like every other WordPress plugin. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user login and activate.

Compliance Page Templates Are Very Easy To Edit

Easily modify the pre-built compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu with the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.

Dedicated Plugin Support

The plugin develop provides a dedicated plugin support team to assist you if you experience any issues.

Some additional benefits include:

• Customized Compliance Templates: Compliance Bar will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
• Full Video Training: Compliance Bar is not difficult to use - a full library of training videos is provided.
• Can Be Used In Every Country: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if 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 For Any Website Purpose: As long as your site runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all kinds of websites. Select only the types of disclaimers that pertain to your specific business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and leave out any pages that you don’t need.

Features

Compliance Bar provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these features:

• Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
• Display Attractive Icon Bar – The plugin will display links to your legal pages using attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. You can also upload your own icons.
• Show Restricted Content – If your site has content that should be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. information related to alcohol, tobacco, adult-related, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.
• EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you need to be aware of EU compliance requirements. The plugin displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
• Record And Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records and stores your visitors’ IP address for future reference, just in case a visitor accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
• Shortcodes – The plugin is integrated with shortcodes to automatically populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site, (including the pop-ups).
• Compatible With Mobile Devices – Compliance Bar has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on the mobile browser being used.

Compliance Bar Features – Details

After installing and activating the plugin, users have access to a number of settings.

Let’s review these briefly …

User Profile

There are a number of default categories in this section where you can input your business information into input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” “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 Page – Image source: plugin documentation)

The plugin uses shortcodes to automatically insert and display the information from your User Profile into your legal pages …

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

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

Compliance Pages

The “Compliance Pages” screen contains all of the plugin’s pages …

(Compliance Bar: Compliance Pages – Image source: plugin documentation)

Below is the full list of legal templates 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
• Adult Content Disclosure

You can create compliance pages for your website quickly and easily simply by selecting check boxes and clicking the “Save” button in the “Compliance Pages” screen …

(Compliance Bar: Legal 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 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 Plugin: Compliance Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)

Edit / Delete Legal Pages

You can edit and delete your compliance disclaimer templates from the “Compliance Pages” tab, just like any typical page in WordPress …

(Compliance Bar Plugin: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: 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, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon 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, etc. …

(Compliance Bar Section: Create Bar – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)

Notes:

• You can create more than one Compliance Bar to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover a multitude of uses throughout your website.
• The plugin lets you display the Compliance Bar on the front page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or Woo), 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 screens, 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 using dynamic icon bar on your site …

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

PopUps

If you plan to show content that may be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that require users to accept your site’s terms and disclaimers.

The “Create Pop Up” section gives you full control over the settings and wordings of 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 in other areas of your website …

You can also set a delay time if you don’t want a Pop Up to display as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from appearing again within a specific time period, 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 must make users aware of your user cookies and notify them of how you use them …

Compliance Bar lets you customize the settings for compliance with EU 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 disclaimer templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit the page content …

General Settings

The “General Settings” menu, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin updates …

User Feedback

Below are some of the testimonials and feedback users have provided for 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

Useful Tips

Here are a few useful ways to use The Compliance Bar Plugin:

• Protection against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
• Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
• Reducing refund disputes by clearly spelling out refund terms before purchase.
• If your website contains 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 a dedicated team to help users if they experience any problems. Users also get access to a complete library of training videos.

Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 200% money-back guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (M – F), the plugin developers will refund double the amount of your purchase price.

Plugin Price

• Single License Edition – Install the plugin on 1 of your own domains. Price = $37 (Normally $127)
• Business License – Install the plugin on 25 domains that you own. Price = $67.00 (Normally $197).
• Professional License – Can be installed on all as many of your own sites as you like. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.

Note: Pricing for the Compliance Bar plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.

Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Compliance Bar Plugin

Compliance Bar – Additional Information

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

For ”how-to” videos showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar Plugin website.

We Recommend

Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven websites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.

For full details, visit the plugin website here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WP Compliance Plugin

Legal Disclaimer: Once again, please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice here. 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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