All posts filed under: Contract

How to build a contract generator with WordPress and Gravity Forms

Background and introduction I purchased a Gravity Forms developers licence back in October 2009. It was one of the best WordPress-related purchases I’ve ever made, as the forms plugin has gone from strength to strength over the years and is now so polished, with so many useful add-ons, that it can truly convert WordPress into an app machine of sorts. In the intervening five years, I’ve put Gravity Forms to all manner of uses, including making a number of contract and licence generation tools with it. Among other things, I’ve used it to build: a website terms of use, mutual confidentiality agreement and privacy policy generator (see ubuildcontracts.com); a Creative Commons licence chooser that built upon the code output of the Creative Commons licence chooser by adding government-specific elements to the code to reflect guidance in the New Zealand Government Open and Accessing Licensing framework (known as NZGOAL) (I’ve since taken this licence generator down); and a generator that enables one to build a fully populated instance of a Government Model Contract for Services, with …

Why legal stuff matters

For some people, thinking about legal stuff may not be at the forefront of their minds when they’re developing, designing, launching or adding content to a WordPress website or developing and releasing a theme or plugin. I suspect it’s also not at the forefront of the minds of some people who launch commercial theme and plugin shops, release WordPress ebooks, produce WordPress podcasts, and so on. It’s easy to get caught in the moment and the excitement of developing, writing or releasing something new. I know what that’s like. Just as a lawyer building a website may pay little attention to something that a developer would consider crucial, so too can developers, designers, bloggers and entrepreneurs pay little attention to things that lawyers consider important if not crucial.  And, of course, in some cases people want to do what’s right or in their commercial interests but just don’t know what the relevant laws are or how they apply. The legal stuff does matter There are various reasons for sticking to the right side of the …