One of the worst predicaments you can find yourself in as a website owner is to suddenly discover that you have broken the law.
Your digital presence has to comply with a wide range of laws and regulatory guidelines, many of which you may probably not even be aware of.
Being non-compliant not only puts you at risk of suffering financial loss, 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 look at a simple and easy-to-install solution for WordPress users that can help make your site fully compliant in minutes.
Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?
As the internet continues to grow at breakneck speed and the rules of the game keep changing, it’s vitally important to stay on top of what’s going on and to make sure that your website or blog remains legally compliant, especially if your online presence is a significant component of your business strategy.
Without legal pages on your web site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, earning disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t approve your digital products on their network, PayPal may shut down your account and freeze your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your web applications, and you won’t be allowed into a range of advertising and merchant networks.
If your digital presence is not in compliance, you could face a number of penalties, including fines, having your website shut down, even jail time!
At the very least, if your website is not in compliance, trust and confidence in your business could become an issue.
(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most 3rd-party services require you to comply with their terms of use and policies!)
Legal Disclaimer: Please note that we are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on this website.
The purpose of this post is to make you aware that:
- Your website may be subject to a number of legal requirements in accordance with federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business (some of which you may not even be aware of),
- How important it is to comply with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you may be offering or endorsing online, and
- There are easy-to-use solutions that can help your business become more compliant, such as the solution that we review in this article.
If your web site falls short in areas of compliance, there is a simple plugin for WordPress users you may be interested in knowing more about.
Let’s Review …
Compliance Bar – Compliance Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Compliance Bar is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your site …
Learn more here: Compliance Bar
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Compliance Bar to instantly make your site compliant:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
Compliance Bar is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP admin login and activate.
Easily Editable Page Templates
You can easily modify the built-in compliance page templates inside Compliance Bar from the settings menu with the WordPress visual content editor.
Dedicated Support
Compliance Bar plugin provides dedicated 24/7 plugin support to help you.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Customized Templates: The plugin will create your legal pages in seconds and customizes them to your business and website.
- Complete Video Training: Compliance Bar is not complicated to use and a full library of training videos is provided if users need help.
- Can Be Used In All Countries: As long as you consult someone who is qualified to give you legal advice to ascertain if 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 or blog is driven by WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Just select the compliance pages you want to add to your site and ignore irrelevant pages.
Plugin Features
Compliance Bar offers many features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Show Attractive Icon Bar – Display links to your legal pages in the form of attractive icons that can be placed anywhere on your page. 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. content related to alcohol, ecigs, dating, etc.), you can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
- EU Cookie Compliance – If your business is based in Europe or display your content to EU visitors, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar that notifies users and covers your website from non-compliance issues.
- Record & Store IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar can record your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case someone accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims they haven’t.
- Shortcodes – Compliance Bar is integrated with shortcodes to populate compliance pages with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the popups).
- Compatible With All Mobile Devices – The plugin has settings for displaying on mobile devices and displays mobile optimized icons automatically depending on visitor mobile browsers.
Using Compliance Bar
Once you have installed the plugin, the plugin’s “Settings” section will be 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 information can be input (e.g. “Business Name,” “Company Address,” “Location Details,” “Company Registration Number,” etc.). Not all categories are compulsory, but some are (e.g. “Business Name,” “Registered Company Address,” etc.)
(Compliance Bar User Profile Page – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
The plugin uses dynamic shortcodes to automatically insert the information you’ve inputted into your User Profile in 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 includes a list of all of the legal page templates …
(Compliance Bar: Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)
When we last checked the Compliance Bar plugin website, there were over 22 compliance pages available, covering all aspects of compliance:
- 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
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” section …
(Compliance Bar Plugin: Compliance Page Templates – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)
Your legal pages will then be created and added to the “Pages” section of your WordPress site.
Compliance Bar Icons
The plugin is installed with a default 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: Compliance Page Template Icons – Image source: plugin documentation)
Edit / Delete Legal Templates
You can easily edit and delete the legal disclaimer templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just as you would any other page in WordPress …
(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Pages – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
Tips
- Customizing your legal pages is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
- The plugin indicates if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance 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, image size, selecting which pages to include an icon for in the Compliance Bar, whether or not to display the Compliance bar on your main 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 display different icons on different pages, or to cover various uses throughout your site.
- The plugin allows you to display a Compliance Bar on the home page of your site, even if you are using a specific theme framework (like Genesis, Thesis or WooThemes), where the home page is configured through the theme itself as a built-in template, and not as a “regular” 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 specified your Compliance Bar settings, it displays 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 icons to be featured …
PopUps
If your site contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display popups that force users to accept your website’s terms or disclaimers.
The “Create Pop Up” tab gives you full control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …
(Pop Ups Section: Create Pop Up – Image sourced from plugin documentation)
You can create more than one Pop Up displaying on different pages, or to cover a range of uses in different areas of your site …
You can also set a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set cookie durations 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 EU visitors, you must be aware of EU compliance requirements …
Compliance Bar 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” screen …
(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” screen, lists all of your legal page templates and shortcodes, and lets you edit their content …
General Settings
The “General Settings” area, lets you access general information, such as promoting and sharing the plugin and getting plugin update notifications …
User Testimonials
Here are just a few of the testimonials that users have written about the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin:
“1000% Highly Recommend This” Anthony La Rocca – Founder (Hustle Marketing)
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”Truly Amazing Product!” Patrick Mauchant – PT Enviromate Technology
Compliance Bar – Useful Tips
Below are a few useful ways you can use Compliance Bar:
- Protect against content theft by spelling out terms of use of your website.
- Displaying compliance icons on specific pages only.
- Minimizing refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
- If your website contains content that is deemed inappropriate for persons below a certain age, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to access your content.
Support
Plugin Developers provide users with a dedicated support team to help users. Plugin users also have access to a complete set of training videos.
Additionally, your purchase is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, 200% refund guarantee. If your version of Compliance Bar does not work within 30 days of purchase and it cannot be fixed within 48 hrs (Monday to Friday), your cost of purchase will be refunded in double.
Plugin Price
- Single Edition – Can be installed on one of your own domains. Cost = $37 (Normally $127)
- Business – Install the plugin on twenty-five domains that you own. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
- Developer License Edition – Install the plugin on all of your own domains. Can be installed on any client site as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.
Please Note: Current pricing for the Compliance Bar Plugin plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing when this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Compliance Bar – WordPress Website Compliance Plugin
Additional Info
Legal Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers assure users on their website that all legal page 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 ”how-to” videos of the plugin, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Compliance Bar website.
Our Recommendation
Compliance Bar is an easy-to-use, simple and cost-effective solution for WordPress-driven sites. We recommend installing this plugin for WordPress users if you want immediate peace of mind and legal protection.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance
Legal Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on our website. Do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website is compliant with the law wherever your business is based.
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