Hosting T&Cs

Web Design and Hosting Contract
Between: Pete Hawkins Ltd and The Client

Summary:

We will always do our best to fulfil your needs and meet your goals, but sometimes it is best to have a few simple things written down so that we both know what is what, who should do what and what happens if stuff goes wrong. In this contract you won’t find complicated legal terms or large passages of unreadable text. We have no desire to trick you into signing something that you might later regret. We do what’s best for the safety of both parties, now and in the future.

In short

You, the customer, are hiring us (Pete Hawkins Ltd ) located at 1 Bull’s Head Courtyard, Commercial Road, Tideswell, Derbyshire, SK17 8NU to design and develop a web site and to host the site on our Servers as outlined at our meeting on the date.

Of course it’s a little more complicated, but we’ll get to that.

What do both parties agree to do?

As our customer, you have the power and ability to enter into this contract either as an individual or on behalf of your company or organisation. You agree to provide us with everything that we need to complete the project including text, images and other information as and when we need it, and in the format that we ask for. You agree to review our work, provide feedback and sign-off approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways and you will also be bound by any dates that we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out at the end of this contract.

We have the experience and ability to perform the services you need from us and we will carry them out in a professional and timely manner. Along the way we will endeavour to meet all the deadlines set but we can’t be responsible for a missed launch date or a deadline if you have been late in supplying materials or have not approved or signed off our work on-time at any stage. On top of this we will also maintain the confidentiality of any information that you give us.

We’re getting down to the nitty gritty now

Design

We will create designs for the look-and-feel, layout and functionality of your web site. This contract includes one main design plus the opportunity for you to make up to two rounds of revisions. If you’re not happy with the designs at this stage, you will pay us in full for all of the work that we have produced until that point and you may either cancel this contract or continue to commission us to make further design revisions at the daily rate of £320.

HTML/CSS layout templates

If the project includes XHTML or HTML markup and CSS templates, we will develop these using valid HTML5 or XHTML Transitional markup and CSS3 for styling. We will test all our markup and CSS in current versions of all major modern browsers including those made by Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera. We will also test to ensure that pages will display visually in a older version of Internet Explorer (IE), albeit not necessarily an identical way. As older IE browsers are not standards compatible, we cannot guarantee our designs will work as we intended in older versions of IE .

We will not test these templates in old or abandoned browsers, for example Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or 5.5 for Windows or Mac, previous versions of Apple’s Safari, Mozilla Firefox or Opera unless otherwise specified. If you need to show the same or similar visual design to visitors using these older browsers, we will charge you at the daily rate set out in our original estimate for any necessary additional code and its testing.

Content Management System

Unless you specifically ask me not to, all sites are built using the free, open-source CMS WordPress. The fee includes an hour’s tuition in editing content and updating photographs.

Text content

We may have written a best-seller but we’re not responsible for writing or inputting any text copy unless we specified it in the original estimate. We’ll be happy to help though, and in addition to the estimate we will charge you at £40 per hour for copy writing or content
input. We will, however, ‘adapt’ text to ensure it optimises better in search engines.

Photographs

You will supply us photographs preferably in digital format. Any printed photography you supply we will, of course, look after but cannot be held responsible for loss of damage whilst in our possession or in transit between us.

If you choose to buy stock photographs we can suggest vendors of stock photography.
Any time we spend searching for appropriate photographs will be charged at £40 per hour.

Changes and revisions

We know from plenty of experience that fixed-price contracts are rarely beneficial to you, as they often limit you to your first idea about how something should look, or how it might work. We don’t want to limit either your options or your opportunities to change your mind.

The estimate/quotation prices are based on the number of days that we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything that you have told us you want to achieve. If you do want to change your mind, add extra pages or templates or even add new functionality, that won’t be a problem. You will be charged at the hourly rate of £40. Along the way we might ask you to put requests in writing so we can keep track of changes.

Technical support

You may already have professional web site hosting, you might even manage that hosting in-house; if that’s the case, great. If you don’t manage your own web site hosting, we can set up an account for you on our own servers. Pete Hawkins Ltd is an experienced reseller and space is bought from very reliable hosting companies. All are Uk based and are certified green hosting companies. Their customer services are excellent and they achieve a server uptime of around 99%. The fee I charge includes setup, software loading and setting up of requested email accounts.

We can also act as your domain name registrar. Transferring an existing domain to us, if it is a .uk site, is usually free. A .com or similar domain name usually incurs a small fee but that also include renewal for a further year. I can effect the transfer for you if you give me the relevant login codes.

The annual hosting fee includes software updates and minor updates. If we feel you’re asking for too much, we’ll discuss this with you and agree terms. It is possible to arrange a small monthly maintenance fee which includes regular updates (new menus, photos, news items etc))

We can, if you wish, set up website traffic monitoring software to enable you to track visitors etc., we don’t offer any backup support for this but it’s all pretty easy.

Legal stuff

We can’t guarantee that the functions contained in any web page templates or in a completed web site will always 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 arising out of the operation of or inability to operate this web site and any other web pages, even if you have advised us of the possibilities of such damages.

If any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.

Phew.

Copyrights

You guarantee to us that any elements of text, graphics, photos, designs, trademarks, or other artwork that you provide us for inclusion in the web site are either owned by your good selfs, or that you have permission to use them.

When we receive your final payment, copyright is automatically assigned as follows:

You own the graphics and other visual elements that we create for you for this project. if you ask us to we will give you a copy of all files and you should store them really safely as we are not required to keep them or provide any native source files that we used in making them.

You also own text content, photographs and other data you provided, unless someone else owns them. We own the HTML and PHP markup (except where this is licensed under a General Public License or similar), CSS and other code and we license it to you for use on only this project.

We love to show off our work and share what we have learned with other people, so we also reserve the right to display and link to your completed project as part of our portfolio and to write about the project on web sites, in magazine articles and in books about web design.

Payments

We are sure you understand how important it is as a small business that you pay the invoices that we send you promptly. As we’re also sure you’ll want to stay friends, you agree to stick tight to the following payment schedule.

Payment schedule

You will be invoiced when both sides are happy with the final product or when we decided we have fulfilled the brief. Invoices are sent out with 30 days payment terms but obviously I need to eat too and would appreciate prompt settlement.

Annual web hosting invoices are sent out automatically and again, prompt payment is appreciated of these.

Termination

Of course you are free to move your website to different servers and terminate this contract for whatever reason you may have. Any monies paid for annual hosting will not be refundable and any monies outstanding shall be paid in full for the full year and not in part. All I ask is that you give me two weeks notice of termination and settle any outstanding bills. I will give you a date when I will terminate the website on my servers.

I reserve the right to terminate our contract too if you fail to pay outstanding invoices within a reasonable period or for other reasons where I feel we can no longer work together. No hosting fees will be refundable in this case, as I pay for my server space upfront too.

You will be given, as a minimum, two weeks notice of the date when your website will be closed on my server.

It is your responsibility to save any emails to your computer and arrange alternative hosting.

Any fees payable for moving your website and/or domain name to alternative suppliers will be fully payable by you. Any technical assistance I give for moving sites is chargeable at £40 an hour. I will provide you with an estimate of time and the fee shall be paid before any work is done.

But where is all the horrible small print?

Just like a parking ticket, you cannot transfer this contract to anyone else without our permission. 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.

Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document under exclusive jurisdiction of English courts.

The dotted line

Signed by and on behalf of Pete Hawkins Ltd.

Date:

Signed by and on behalf of the client

Date

Pete Hawkins Ltd, The Old Cellars, Bull’s Head Courtyard, Tideswell, Derbyshire, SK17 8NU

W: www.petehawkins.ltd.uk

E: pete@petehawkins.ltd.uk

T: 01298 872470

Registered at the above address Registered in England no. 7459643

Make a beautiful website