Blissfully.Me

I have just signed my first proper contract for web design work. I didn’t think it would be very different but I have to admit that signing on that dotted line did make the whole process feel much more serious and professional.

This new project is just a tiny site for one of the lecturers in my university department, something we’d discussed years ago but never pursued until now. Thankfully he understands that my PhD work comes first – he’s quite happy to claim just a scant few hours from my weekends and is not demanding a masterpiece needing hours and hours of work. In other words, he’s not far from the perfect client currently!

That said, I have become convinced of the importance of contracts even when dealing with the perfect client. My lecturer was happy to sign it, and I think quite impressed that I had one at all. I hope that it has left him much clearer as to his role and mine and hopfully we’ll never need to refer it.

Writing My Contract

I admit that I had put off the writing this for a long time. I’m always nervous to take on anything that I think requires proper legal support – web design is a hobby, not my job, and certainly I have not got enough money to fork out for legal advice! I had always intended to put together a jargon- and legalese-free contract just to set things straight, but it wasn’t until I rediscovered Andy Clarke’s 24 Ways article entitled Contract Killer that I really found inspiration to start.

Andy’s “Killer Contract” is written in normal English for the most part, is easy to understand, reassuringly fair and occasionally humorous. Andy released the full text of his contract under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. For those who’ve never encountered the Creative Commons Licenses before, they provide alternatives to the more common “all rights reserved” usage licenses. Adopting an “Attribution-Share Alike” license means people are allowed to use, modify and republish your work as long as they credit you and license their work the same way. I was delighted to see this, and decided that I would create my contract using Andy’s as a guide.

I used most of the sections that were present in Andy’s contract, though some of them were renamed or reordered:

• Introduction
• The Basics
• What Are Your Responsibilities? (the client’s)
• What Are My Responsibilities? (my own)
• Design
• Website Coding and Testing
• Text Content
• Photographs
• Hosting and Technical Support
• Copyright
• Payment
• Legal Stuff
• Acknowledgements (it was here I referred back to Andy Clarke, linking both to his contract and his website)
• Signatures

Some of these sections could almost belong in the Statement of Work rather than the contract, such as information about testing, but in this document I have just established the standard testing procedure that I follow. Any more specific information would go into the Statement of Work and that would override the information in the contract. (Maybe I should call this my cascading contract!) The contract is written to be generic; only 2 paragraphs and the signatures are specific to the project and need any alterations. One version of the contract has only dotted lines for the editable content so that all specific sections can be handwritten.

I don’t know if my contract will be of use to anyone else as it is essentially a customisation of Andy Clarke’s, but just in case I will make it freely available here. There are two different versions of this contract: the first has underlined blanks so that you can fill it in with pen rather than altering it before you use it and is both a PDF (web design contract with blanks in PDF format) and a Rich-Text File (web design contract with blanks in RTF format). The other is meant for electronic alteration – the spaces for client name etc are currently filled with [client name] spaceholders and will need to be customised for every project before printing. This is only available as a RTF document (web design contract for alteration).

Like Andy’s, it is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license: feel free to use or modify it to your heart’s content, but remember to cite Andy and myself. I’ve been told that it reads fairly formally, which is a reflection of me, I guess, so if this suits your personality you may find that useful. Other readers who prefer a more relaxed method of communication will probably want to modify it to suit their own voice.

If you do find this some use, I’d love it if you’d post here to let me know. If you have any suggestions or spot a problem with this contract, do comment, it would be great to hear from you: any feedback is greatly appreciated!