MDM Website Design & Development Contract
Includes full ownership and the use of a fully responsive (mobile friendly) template, access
to template updates, full design and full development of one wordpress website.
Contract & Terms
We’ll always do our best to fulfil your needs and meet your expectations, but it’s important to have things written down so that we both know what’s what, who should do what and when, and what will happen if something goes wrong. In this contract you won’t find any complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We’ve no desire to trick you into signing something that you might later regret so we have made the information below as simple to understand as possible.
So in short;
By signing this contract (“You”) are hiring us (Modern Design Media) to
Design and develop a Wordpress website using the Divi Theme: For the total price of total as outlined in our previous correspondence and the invoice attached.
What do both parties agree to?
You: You have the authority to enter into this contract on behalf of yourself, your company or your organisation. You’ll give us the assets and information we tell you we need to complete the project. You’ll do this in a timely manner, and provide it in the formats we ask for to the best of your ability. You’ll agree to review our work, provide feedback and approvals in a timely manner. Deadlines work both ways, so we will also be bound by dates we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule agreed upon.
Us: We have the experience and ability to do everything we’ve agreed with you and we’ll do it all in a professional and timely manner. We’ll endeavour to meet every deadline that’s set up and complete the project on schedule.
Design & Review
We create look-and-feel designs, and flexible layouts that adapt to the capabilities of many devices and screen sizes. We create designs iteratively and use predominantly Wordpress & the Divi Theme so we won’t waste time mocking up every template as a static visual. We may use visuals to indicate a creative direction (colour, texture and typography.) but most of our designs will be live online for you to see as we develop the project.
You’ll have plenty of opportunities to review our work and provide feedback. We’ll share a development site with you and we’ll have regular, contact throughout the duration of your project. If, at any stage, you change your mind about what you want to be delivered and are not happy with the direction our work is taking you’ll pay us in full for the time we’ve spent working with you until that point and terminate this contract. No refunds will be issued for any payments that have been made.
Content provision
We use a project management service called Freedcamp for all project communication. At the start of your project we will provide you with a login to this service and a list of questions, content, & information we need from you to begin working on the project. We do not, under any circumstances, accept content or website revision requests via phone call or in person meetings. A written list is required for all feedback throughout the project. Development begins after you have submitted your content and provided us with all requested information. It can take anywhere from 1-6 weeks depending on how quickly you provide us with content and the size of the project.
Text content
Unless agreed separately, we’re not responsible for creating any content for your website. You will provide a final version of all content for each page of your site in a word or google doc format. We will use placeholder text until content is provided in order to move forward with the design process. Content should be sent in an edited, final version. We understand you may need to adjust or edit your content to an extent but ask that you review it carefully before submitting it to us to avoid unnecessary revisions and wasted time.
Graphics and photographs
You will provide all graphics, video, vector files, logo files, & imagery needed to create your site. We will select appropriate free stock photos for the initial draft of your website to help give you a better idea of what we need. Often, these images work extremely well and if you like what we chose, you can keep any of the images we select. If not, you are responsible to provide replacement images for anything you dislike.
Layout Types (All pages included in proposal are advanced unless otherwise noted in this document)
Advanced Pages: Advanced pages indicate full design and development and advanced layouts with multiple page sections. The general time involved in an advanced page layout is 2-3 hours. You can see a sample advanced mockup here.
Simple Pages:
Simple pages generally include 1-2 images and text with a sidebar. These pages are much more simple than advanced pages and take under 1 hour each. Please note, simple pages include event listings, blog posts, and other special posts types so if your project includes 6 simple pages you could have 2 regular pages, 2 events, and 2 blog posts created for you. You can always add more of these items after we train you on how to use your site. You can see a sample simple mockup here.
Client Responsiveness & Project Completion
Communication is extremely important in order to complete your project in a timely manner. You, the client, agree to provide all relevant content to the project in a reasonable amount of time. A lapse in communication or failure to provide requested content or feedback for more than 1 month will automatically incur a delay of project fee of 10% of your project total. We make space in our project schedule for your website at the time we receive your signed contract and ask that you make every effort to provide us with the resources we need to get your project done on schedule. Furthermore, if your project is delayed due to failure to provide content and updates to already submitted content are required, such as an office move requiring a change of address on the site or updated staff members, these changes will be billed at our regular hourly rate. This applies to revised content that would not otherwise have been available if your project was completed without delays. If a delay of more than 3 months occurs we reserve the right to consider your project cancelled. Please keep in touch with us and communicate if there is a reason for delays so that we can complete your project on schedule.
Technical Support & Maintaining Your Website
We’re not a website hosting company so, though we do offer support for website hosting, email or other services relating to hosting we do not include it in your website development contract. You may already have professional hosting, if you do, great. If you don’t, we can help you set up an account at one of our preferred hosting providers. Included in this contract we will set up your new site on a server. Any other services such as Google Analytics, SSL certificates, google search console & email services are available at an additional cost outlined in the additional options section above.
We build your website using certain theme templates/Theme Frameworks that work consistently with the WordPress frameworks and, as such, cannot and will not guarantee that should you wish to change the theme or the templates to another system (whether WordPress or not) , that the contents of the website we build for you will be transferable in its entirety. Should you enter into a maintenance contract with us we will keep the site up to date with plugins, security measures and ‘latest’ versions. Due to the very nature of the web and hosting, we cannot guarantee 100% uptime or ultimate protection from criminal elements that may want to hack your site. We do install the latest security software and take every measure to protect your site. Should you not enter into a contract with us to maintain your website – we cannot guarantee any backup or repair services to you after the warranty period of 60 days. Should you break your own website in any way, we will be happy to help you repair it at our hourly rate of ($50/hour).
Warranty
After your website completion and launch you will have a 60 day warranty period. This warranty is to cover defects in the website, errors in the code, or broken functionality. If any issue should occur during this time please contact us and we will be happy to fix it for you! It does not cover changes to content of any kind, new features, or new pages.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
We don’t guarantee improvements to your website’s search engine ranking, but the web pages that we develop are accessible to search engines and we make every effort to build them to the highest SEO standards. MDM is in no way responsible or liable for your website’s rankings on google or any other search engine. By signing this agreement you release us from any damage claims due ranking changes. If you are replacing an existing website we will redirect previous URL’s and do everything in our power to make sure your ranking is not affected. By signing this contract you accept and understand the risks of this kind of update.
Updates
At the time of your websites completion it will be fully up to date with all current software. Future updates are client responsibility and should be handled by a trained web developer. Keeping your website up to date is extremely important for security purposes. Outdated software on your server can lead to malware and other security problems. We are happy to help keep your site up to date with regular maintenance. If you choose to update or manage your website yourself any subsequent damages are not the responsibility of MDM. All updates should be handled with caution, and your website should ALWAYS be backed up before making any major updates. If you have questions about updates please speak with us.
Changes and revisions
We don’t want to limit your ability to change your mind. The price at the beginning of this contract is based on the number of hours that we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything you’ve told us you want to achieve, but we’re happy to be flexible. If you want to change your mind or add anything new, that won’t be a problem as we’ll provide a separate estimate for any additional work.
Legal stuff
We’ll carry out our work in accordance with good industry practice and at the standard expected from a suitably qualified person with relevant experience. That said, we can’t guarantee that our work will be error-free and so we can’t be liable to you or any third-party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages, even if you’ve advised us of them.
Finally, if any provision of this contract shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this contract and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
Intellectual property rights
Just to be clear, “Intellectual property rights” means all patents, rights to inventions, copyright (including rights in software) and related rights, trademarks, service marks, get up and trade names, internet domain names, rights to goodwill or to sue for passing off, rights in designs, database rights, rights in confidential information (including know-how) and any other intellectual property rights, in each case whether registered or unregistered and including all applications (or rights to apply) for, and renewals or extensions of, such rights and all similar or equivalent rights or forms of protection which subsist or shall subsist now or in the future in any part of the world.
First, you guarantee that all elements of text, images or other artwork you provide are either owned by you, or that you have permission to use them. When you provide text, images or other artwork to us, you agree to protect us from any claim by a third party that we’re using their intellectual property.
We guarantee that all elements of the work we deliver to you are either owned by us or we’ve obtained permission to provide them to you. When we provide text, images or other artwork to you, we agree to protect you from any claim by a third party that you’re using their intellectual property. Provided you’ve paid for the work and that this contract hasn’t been terminated, we’ll assign all intellectual property rights to you as follows:
You’ll own the website we design for you plus the visual elements that we create for it. You own all intellectual property rights of text, images, site specifications and data you provided, unless someone else owns them. We’ll own any intellectual property rights we’ve developed prior to, or developed separately from this project and not paid for by you. We’ll own the unique combination of these elements that constitutes a complete design and we’ll license its use to you, exclusively and in perpetuity for this project only, unless we agree otherwise.
Displaying our work
We love to show off our work, so we reserve the right to display all aspects of our creative work, including sketches, work-in-progress designs and the completed project on our portfolio and in articles on websites, in magazine articles and in books.
Payment schedule
A 50% non-refundable deposit is required at the beginning of all projects. This deposit cannot be transferred to other projects should you decide to terminate this contract. By signing this agreement, you agree to make payment for the project in full along with any agreed upon additions before the site goes live. Should you choose at any time not to complete this project, your deposit payment will not be refunded and you will be invoiced for any additional work completed up to the point of cancellation.
If payment is not made full we are under no obligation to launch your site and we will maintain ownership of our work until payment has been made. Payment can be made by check, bank transfer (1% service fee applies), or credit card (2.9% service fee applies). If you choose to pay by check please let us know your deposit is on it’s way so we can get started on your project.
This contract stays in place and need not be renewed. If for some reason one part of this contract becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place.
