Terms of Service v5

Estimates/Pricing

Before I start a project (a task or a series of tasks) I’ll provide an estimate of involved costs and turn-around times.

Particularly for complex projects, estimates are done thoroughly as they include not only the time taken to complete the project but also the time for reviews, quality assurance and deployment.

The more information that you provide to me about your project, the more accurate that I can provide the involved costs and turn-around times, but in the end estimates are just estimates. Whenever I foresee a project going beyond the estimate, I’ll warn you as soon as possible so we can discuss further action.

Estimates are also valid for 30 days from the time it was first issued.

Estimates must be kept confidential.

Payment

If an estimate of involved costs exceeds $1000, I may require a 20% upfront payment before I begin.

Alternatively I may choose to just work at my hourly rate and in that case I will require payment every-time 5 hours lapses.

I’ll email you the invoice, and you may choose to Pay via PayPal or EFT.

If an invoice isn’t paid within 14 business days that the invoice is sent, I am not entitled to continue unless the invoice is paid.

Resources

In order to complete your project I may require resources such as web designs, web fonts, plugins and access to APIs. Failure to supply required resources may incur longer turn-around times hence additional charges.

Web designs

If a project involves building a website, web page, or part of a web page, then I’ll require the designs of how you want it to work on a desktop computer.

In most cases I may require designs in an uncompressed format (eg. PSDs unflattened instead of jpeg files).

Responsive Web designs

When I build web pages I make them responsive and I won’t always require designs for how they will work on mobile and tablets. In fact if you supply me with such designs more time is required to make sure I that match the designs exactly to how you want it to work on mobile, tablet as well as desktop.

Furthermore it gets more complicated because not all mobile and tablet devices have the same dimensions, not everybody uses the same orientation when they view the website on their device (some people view a website on landscape, and others on a portrait) and not everybody has the same settings (eg. Some people have different overriding settings on their web browser such as font size and scroll-bar visibility).

In order to find out the best way to make a webpage responsive is to be involved in the building process. So for a smooth process I’ll always suggest that you just supply me with web designs for the desktop version only, and allow me to improvise for mobile and tablet, and then we’ll reassess from there.

I’ll greatly accept designs for other devices, they will just take longer.

Checkout designs

If you require me to build an ecommerce component for a website, I won’t require designs for the checkout pages (eg. cart, checkout, my account, thank you etc.). I will have a template that is already built, tested and proven robust, so when I build this I’ll just let the checkout pages use the styles as the rest of the website (eg. fonts, colors, spacing etc.). Once this has been built we can reassess form there.

Complex websites

If I find that you want to build a website  or a website component that is complex, for instance if it involves;

Then I’ll need to prototype, this involves building the website or a component without any having any branding elements (It’ll have no fonts, have a dominantly grey color scheme). The purpose of the prototype is to figure out;

And all of is can be achieved efficiently by simply building the website before designing the website.

Web fonts

To have a font that’s not featured on the Google font library, I’ll need you to supply me with the web fonts with files including woff, ttf and svg. You’ll also need to make sure that you have the right to use them (ie. Most fonts require have a font that requires that you have licence to use them on your website.

Plugins

Some plugins are required to be purchased, in that case I require the client to purchase the plugin themselves.

Whilst I’ll do as much as I can within my power, in the end I’m not responsible for the consequences of the plugin.

APIs

Whilst I’ll do as much as I can within my power, in the end I’m not responsible for the consequences of the API.

Website/Server access

If your project involves me making changes to an existing website, I’ll require all the logins necessary in order to make a full backup.

Quality of work

Accuracy

I will build the website or website component to match the designs your provided, but some elements may be off by a few pixels (font weights, margins, spacings etc.).

SEO

I can optimise the coding of the website so search engines can crawl and index the pages. We’ll add a robots.txt file and xml sitemaps and the things required for a search-engine friendly website according to Google webmaster. We’ll provide you with the tools you need to order to build your SEO rankings. But your SEO rankings is determined by your content and popularity more than how your website is built.

If your serious about SEO, we would also recommend seeing he SEO experts first OR we can get the designs reviewed by the SEO expert before we build.

Data entry

When I build a website, I do enough data entry so the client can understand how everything works (how the pages are set up, how the navigation works, how the custom fields are set up).

Soon we give the client access to the WordPress admin and allow the client to make edits and additions. Because during this stage the client may realise that some things will need to change (eg. a new custom field is required, or the client may realise that the images that he’s uploading is too small so the website layout will need to be altered in order to accommodate this).

The stage of data entry is part of the debugging process.

CMS

As a standard I’ll give you the ability to update your site with new content, but you won’t have the ability to redesign the site. For instance, you’ll be able to edit;

Quality Assurance

Support browsers and devices

IE10+, latest versions of chrome, opera, safari, firefox, iOS, android

Anything else older than that will be a required extra.

Retina

Retina is required as an extra, furthermore your live server will need to be accessed to see if it can handle the load.

Staging server

You’re project will be hosted on my staging server.

Reviews

After I’ve completed a project this is your opportunity to inform me of any mistakes I made so I will fix. You can also provide changes for me to action, these changes are to…

Communication

Use Quire to list all of your feedback. Alternatively if you have a task management system that works the same way, I will use that.

Other developers

If other developers are involved in the project, I require that we will work using sharing/collaboration tool such as Github or Bitbucket.

Deployment

If you allow me to deploy the site for you, I’ll require all the necessary logins (domain registrar, web hosting).

Since the website is not on my server I’m not responsible for the implications of the website.

If deployment time implicates over 4 hours then I charge my hourly rate starting after the 4th hour.

Server

Whilst I’ll do as much as I can within my power, in the end I’m not responsible for the consequences of the server.

Emails

You may have a website that’ll send emails. (eg. a Contact form that sends the form submission to your client). In order to ensure maximum deliverability of your email it’ll depend on your server.

7 day warranty

After a project is complete, you have a 7 day warranty. So in the unlikely case that within 7 days if you notice anything about the project that hasn’t been completed properly, I’ll fix it for free of charge.

After the warranty period is over, whether or not if the problem with the website or webpage is my mistake I will charge in order to fix it.

Website maintenance

After a project is complete, the website is yours and you are welcome to do what you want with it.

WordPress Upgrades

From time to time, plugins and WordPress will require updating. Updates typically happen when developers release security patches or add extra functionality. It’s good practice to keep your themes, plugins & WordPress version updated to the latest versions. The top two reasons for sites being hacked are insecure passwords & outdated (vulnerable) software.

As a result of updating WordPress and it’s plugins, WordPress themes will need to be updated as well. If this does happen outside of the 7 day warranty then this will be regarded as additional work.

WordPress plugins

I strongly advise all my clients and colleagues to choose plugins from credible developers/suppliers.

The number of plugins and third-party APIs out there are enormous, and it’s impossible for any developer, it’s impossible for any developer to know them all inside out. I may not know the answer, but I’ll know how to find it (i.e. when I read the web developer documentation, I’ll understand it).

Business implications

After a project is complete, I’m not responsible for any implications of the website, for instance I’m not responsible for;

Ownership

After a project is complete, I’ll provide you with all the files that I’ve produced for this project. As soon as this is done. I’m not entitled to keep a copy of the files.

Contact/Availability

Provided that there are no outstanding invoices or resources I am entitled to complete projects, attend meetings and meet deadlines that we have both agreed on. I’m also contactable outside business hours (9 to 17:30 UTC+10:00 timezone) and may even be available at short notice, however I am not entitled to be available at your every demand, it’s your responsibility to be considerate of my time and book me at appropriately.

I am contactable via phone, email, live chat, and video conference call.



Last modified: September 28, 2019