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I'm new at this and making a simple website for a person. It will mostly be HTML and CSS (no fancy scripts). I'm considering having him sign a contract. What exactly should be included in a contract? I'm assuming payment, but any thing else like they agree to take responsibility if they give me copyrighted material to put on the site?

I've never seen a full contract and if someone could share it would be great. I'd like to see an entire example so I can see how it's laid out.

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The open source contract (https://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/projects/contract-killer/)

Quote:

Your killer contract should cover:

 - A simple overview of who is hiring who, what they’re being hired to
   do, when and for how much 
 - What both parties agree to do and what their respective responsibilities are 
 - The specifics of the deal and what is or isn’t included in the scope 
 - What happens when people change their minds (as they almost always do) 
 - A simple overview of liabilities and other legal matters 
 - You might even include a few jokes
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  • That's funny, I've actually seen someone use that contract before and didn't know where it was from. Now I know why they had sections in "their" contract that were completely irrelevant to the work that they were being hired for... I personally find jokes in a professional contract to be very offputting, but they can put some clients at ease, particularly ones who are new to contracts. – user45623 Mar 11 '17 at 8:44
  • Clearly just copy pasting without reading it is silly, but if you have no contract and don't want to hire a lawyer to write one for you, this is a great starting point. – user3244085 Mar 13 '17 at 7:58
  • Out of curiosity are contracts them self copyrighted? For example can you just copy a contract you like and use it yourself? – JamesJay Sep 10 '17 at 7:07
  • The open source one, yes. Other contracts: I've seen firms spend thousands of euros on lawyers to make a decent contract and I do think there is copyright on that. What I have done in the past is borrow some paragraphs or copy and rewrite, i.e. not a verbatim copy. (Not saying that is legal, but the odds of getting caught are negligible) – user3244085 Sep 10 '17 at 14:54
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There are plenty of good resources for this, try this one

Basically, you need to cover:

  • What you will do
  • How long it will take
  • The nature of your "employment"
  • Your fees, and milestones for payment
  • The finality of the product (is it yours or theirs? Who will maintain it after it is done? etc)
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