Compliance Bar – Legal Web Compliance Plugin For WordPress

One of the worst situations you can find yourself in as a website owner is to break the law.

Your website or blog has to comply with a whole range of federal, state and even local laws and regulations, 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 loss of your reputation. Why risk your money and reputation, when you can protect yourself so inexpensively?

In this post, we review a simple and very inexpensive solution for WordPress users that can help make your website fully compliant just minutes.

Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?

As the digital business realm continues growing at an extraordinary rate and the rules constantly change, it’s important that you stay informed about what’s going on and to make sure that your site remains legally compliant, especially if your digital presence is a significant component of your overall business strategy.

If you do not display certain legal pages on your site (e.g. terms and conditions of use, privacy statement, financial disclaimers, etc.), many third-party sites such as Google won’t let you advertise, sites like ClickBank won’t let you list your digital products for sale, PayPal may shut down your account and withhold payment of your funds, Facebook and other social sites will suspend your applications, and you won’t be accepted into a number of advertising or merchant networks.

Plus, you may also be inadvertently leaving yourself open and vulnerable to lawsuits.

At the very least, without making it very clear to your visitors that your site complies with all legal requirements and regulatory guidelines, visitors could lose trust and confidence in your business.

(In addition to legal and regulatory compliance, most third-party services require you to comply with their terms of use!)

Legal Disclaimer: We are not lawyers and we offer no legal advice on our website.

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

1. Your website may be subject to many legal requirements in accordance with mandatory federal, state or local laws and regulations that govern your business,
2. The importance of complying with the terms of service of third-party providers whose products or services you are offering or endorsing in your website, and
3. There are easy solutions for WordPress website owners that can help your business become more compliant, such as the plugin that we discuss in this post.

If your website or blog lacks in aspects of compliance, below we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress users you will probably be interested in using.

Today’s WordPress Plugin Is …

Compliance Bar Plugin – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Plugin Description

The Compliance Bar Plugin For WordPress is a complete compliance & disclaimer solution for your online presence …

For more details, visit the plugin site here: Compliance Bar Plugin

Plugin Benefits

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

Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.

Compliance Bar is really easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.

Easy To Edit Page Templates

Easily modify the built-in compliance templates inside the plugin from the settings menu using the WYSIWYG editor.

Dedicated 24/7 Support

The plugin develop provides dedicated plugin support to help you if you experience any difficulties.

Additional benefits of using the plugin include:

• Customized Legal Templates: The Compliance Bar plugin creates 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 available.
• Can Be Used 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 page templates provided in the plugin are suitable and satisfactory for your business, country and website, you can use the plugin wherever you are located.
• Use On All WordPress Sites: If your website runs on WordPress, you can use the plugin for all website purposes. Select only the types of disclaimers that suit your particular business model (e.g. affiliate or CPA marketing, business services, AdSense, AdWords, adult, medical, etc) and ignore any pages that you don’t need.

Compliance Bar Features

Compliance Bar provides many features to site owners. Here are just a few:

• Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
• Display Visually Appealing Icon Bar – Display links to your compliance pages in the form of attractive icons that can be positioned on different locations in your page. You can also upload icons of your choice.
• Show Sensitive Content – If you plan to display content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, tobacco, adult content, etc.), the plugin can display pop-ups that require users to accept your terms or disclaimers.
• EU User Cookie Compliance – If you are based in Europe or display your content to visitors in the EU, you must be aware of EU Cookie law. Compliance Bar displays an attractive bar notifying visitors and covering you from non-compliance.
• Records And Stores IP Acceptance – Compliance Bar records your visitors’ IP address for reference, just in case a user accepts your terms or disclaimers and then claims otherwise.
• Shortcode Driven – The plugin uses shortcodes to populate the templates with your personal information. These shortcodes also allow you to place information anywhere on your site or blog, (including the pop-ups).
• Mobile Friendly – Compliance Bar has individual settings for displaying on mobile devices and tablets and displays mobile optimized icons automatically based on the web browser being used.

Features – Details

After installing and activating the plugin, you will then get access to a section where the plugin’s settings can be configured.

Let’s go through these briefly …

User Profile

There are a number of default fields in this section where you can input your information into entered (e.g. “Business Name,” “Support Desk URL,” “Contact Phone,” “Product Name,” etc.). Not all categories are required, but some are (e.g. “Contact Name,” “Support Desk URL,” etc.)

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

Compliance Bar uses shortcodes to insert and display the information from your User Profile fields inside your legal templates …

(Compliance Bar User Profile Section: Shortcodes – Image sourced from plugin documentation)

Once the minimum required (i.e. compulsory) information has been entered into the profile fields, you can then access the other sections of the plugin.

Compliance Pages

The “Compliance Pages” section lists all of the plugin’s legal template pages …

(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Screenshot source: plugin documentation)

Last time we checked the plugin website, there were over 22 compliance templates available for complying with online business laws and regulations:

• 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

Creating legal pages for your blog or website is a simple process. Just select the checkboxes next to the pages you want to create and click the “Save” button at the bottom of the “Create Pages” section …

(Compliance Bar: Legal Pages – Image sourced from 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 attractive icons for referencing your legal pages …

The 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 Plugin: Legal Page Template Icons – Image sourced from plugin documentation)

Edit / Delete Compliance Templates

You can easily customize and delete the compliance templates in the “Compliance Pages” section, just like any typical WordPress page …

(Compliance Bar: Edit Compliance Templates – Image source: plugin documentation)

Notes

• Customizing the legal templates is recommended, as the pages contain generic content.
• The plugin notifies you if it detects existing similar pages on your site (e.g. compliance pages created before you installed the plugin).

Compliance Bar

The plugin offers many options to customize the Compliance Bar, including position, displaying links or icon images, background colors and images, icon size, specifying 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 a number of Compliance Bars to display different disclaimers on different pages, or to cover different uses in other areas of your website.
• The plugin allows you to display the Compliance Bar on the main page of your website, even if you are using a specific theme (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 will display links to your compliance pages using dynamic icon bar on your site …

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

PopUps

If your website contains content that needs to be restricted to certain age groups (e.g. content related to alcohol, ecigs, adult-related, etc.), Compliance Bar can display pop-ups that restricts access to visitors who do not accept your terms and disclaimers.

The “Create Pop Up” screen gives you complete control over the settings and customization of your pop ups …

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

You can create more than one Pop Up for different pages, or to cover different uses in other sections of your site …

You can also specify a delay time to prevent Pop Ups from displaying as soon as visitors arrive, set a cookie duration to prevent Pop Ups from displaying 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 you do business in the EU or display your content to visitors in the EU, you need to 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 User 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” screen, lists all of your compliance templates and shortcodes, and lets you modify the page content …

General Settings

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

Feedback From Users

Here are a couple of the testimonials users have submitted for the Compliance Bar plugin:

”One of the Best Plugins I Have Used” Ray Lane – (The Video Guy)

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“Don’t Risk Your Online Business” Mike Thomas (The Mike From Maine Show)

Compliance Bar Plugin Tips

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

• Protect against content theft by spelling out your website’s terms of use.
• Displaying compliance icons only on specific pages.
• End refund disputes by clearly spelling out the refund terms before purchase.
• If you publish content that is deemed inappropriate for underaged viewers on your site, you can force visitors to click to confirm that they are of legal age to view your content.

Compliance Bar Plugin Product Support

Compliance Bar provides users with a dedicated team to assist you with anything you need. You also get access to a complete set of training videos.

Additionally, your purchase is backed by a risk-free, 30 day, 200% money-back 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 twice the amount of the cost of purchasing.

Product License Price

• Single – Install the plugin on one site that you own. Cost = $47 (Normally $127)
• Business Licensing – Install the plugin on up to 25 of your own domains. Cost = $67.00 (Normally $197).
• Professional Edition – Can be installed on multiple of your own sites. Can be installed on all client sites for payment or as part of a paid service. Cost = $97.00.

Note: Pricing for Compliance Bar can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller 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 – Website Compliance Plugin For WordPress

Additional Info

Legal Page Templates Reviewed By Lawyers – The plugin developers claim on their website that all legal templates have already been reviewed and approved by a leading lawyer. Nonetheless, we highly recommend that you get legal advice from a qualified legal expert in your area for your peace of mind.

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

Install This Plugin

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

For more details, check out the plugin here: Compliance Bar Plugin – Compliance Bar – WordPress Plugin For Website Compliance

Disclaimer: Once again, we are not lawyers and we are not offering legal advice on this website. You must do your own due diligence and consult a legal expert about the best way to ensure that your website fully complies with the law in your country or region.

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Disclaimer: This site has no association with WordPress or any WordPress-related products written about on this website. We may receive an affiliate commission from purchases of third-party services or products mentioned on our website. All images remain the copyright of their respective owners, comply with all license terms and agreements of use to the best of our knowledge and are used solely for illustrative or training purposes.

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