These are general terms covering the website and how we work. Any project we take on is governed by its own written scope agreement, and where that agreement differs from this page, the signed agreement controls.

1. Who these terms are with

This website is operated by Cibbster Designs, Lapeer, MI, United States. By using cibbster.com you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the site.

2. Using this website

You may browse, read and share this site freely. You may not:

Use it for any unlawful purpose, or to harass or defraud anybody.
Attempt to gain unauthorised access to the site, its server or any connected system.
Submit deliberately false information through the contact form, or use it to send unsolicited commercial messages.
Scrape or copy the site's content wholesale for republication as your own.

3. Our content

All content on this site — text, design, code, graphics and logos — is owned by Cibbster Designs and protected by copyright, unless credited otherwise.

You are welcome to quote from our articles with attribution and a link back. You may not republish an article in full, or present our content as your own work.

Client names, logos and screenshots shown in our portfolio remain the property of those clients and appear here to illustrate work performed.

4. Information on this site

We publish starting prices, timelines and technical guidance in good faith and keep them current. They are general information, not a binding offer or professional advice for your specific situation. A binding price exists only in a written quote issued after discovery.

Articles about legal topics — ADA and accessibility obligations in particular — are general information and not legal advice. For your own situation, consult a qualified attorney.

5. How project work runs

Quotes and scope

We provide a fixed written quote after discovery. That price holds unless you change the scope; if you do, we will tell you what the change costs before doing the work, never after.

Payment

Project work is billed in milestones — ordinarily a 50% deposit to begin and the balance on completion, with the schedule set out in your agreement. Invoices are due within 14 days, and overdue balances carry interest at 1.5% per month. Ongoing services are billed monthly in advance and may be cancelled with 30 days' notice.

Work outside an agreed scope — post-launch changes, additional training, ad-hoc requests — is billed at $135 per hour and quoted in advance, so you always know what something costs before we start it.

Your responsibilities

Projects depend on content, feedback and access from your side. You are responsible for providing these in reasonable time, and for holding the rights to any text, images, logos or other material you supply. Delays in providing them will move the timeline.

Ownership and intellectual property

Ownership depends on how you engaged us, so this section is worth reading rather than assuming. Your own agreement states which of the two arrangements below applies to you, and it says so before you sign.

Commissioned builds transfer to you. Where you commission a website or application as its own engagement — its own scope, its own project fee — ownership of the bespoke work produced for you, meaning the custom code, the design and the content we write, transfers to you on final payment. You may take it anywhere, and we will help you move it.

Everything else remains ours. Where a website or other deliverable is produced under an ongoing plan, a retainer, or any arrangement other than a separately commissioned build — including a site provided as part of a hosting or marketing package — Cibbster Designs retains ownership of it. You hold a licence to use it for as long as that agreement is running, and the licence ends when the agreement ends.

Where an agreement is silent, ownership stays with us. A transfer has to be written into the agreement. If you want one, ask for it before you sign rather than after.

What is always yours, in either arrangement. Your domain name; the text, photographs, logos and other material you supplied; your customer and analytics data; and any accounts registered in your name. We do not claim ownership of anything you brought with you, and we do not hold a domain in order to make leaving harder.

What is always ours, in either arrangement. The underlying framework, components, libraries, tooling and development patterns we reuse across clients. Where a commissioned build transfers to you, these come with it under a perpetual, non-exclusive licence — you can keep using and modifying them within that project, but not resell them as their own product. Third-party components remain under their own licences.

We retain the right to display the work in our portfolio unless you ask us not to.

Revisions and acceptance

The revision rounds included are stated in your agreement. After launch, defects — anything not working as specified — are fixed free of charge for 30 days. New features requested after launch are quoted as new work.

6. What we do not guarantee

We guarantee the work: the deliverables in your agreement, built to the standards described. We cannot guarantee outcomes that depend on third parties.

Specifically, no one can guarantee search engine rankings. Google does not sell or promise positions and changes its algorithms continually. We guarantee the SEO work is performed and documented, and you can verify the results independently in your own Search Console and Analytics accounts. Any agency promising guaranteed rankings is either misleading you or planning something that will harm you.

Similarly, we build to WCAG 2.2 AA and test rigorously, but no developer can guarantee immunity from an accessibility claim. Conformance materially reduces risk; it does not eliminate the possibility that somebody files something.

7. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability arising out of any project is limited to the amount you paid us for that project. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including lost profits, lost data or lost business opportunity.

This site and its content are provided "as is" without warranties of any kind. We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability of the website itself.

8. Third-party links

This site links to external websites, including client sites and reference material. We do not control them and are not responsible for their content, privacy practices or accessibility.

9. Termination

Either party may end an engagement in writing. You pay for work completed to that point. What happens next depends on which arrangement you are in under section 5.

A commissioned build: we hand over everything produced and paid for, and ownership passes as described in section 5.

Work produced under an ongoing plan or retainer: your licence to use it ends when the agreement ends, and the site is taken offline and retained by us. You keep your domain, your content and your data, and on request we will export your content, images and database so that nothing you supplied is lost. We will not transfer a site that was not bought outright.

Monthly services may be cancelled with 30 days' notice. There is no exit fee for leaving our hosting: if you own the site, you take it with you and we will help your new host with the migration.

10. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Michigan, United States, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Michigan.

11. Changes

We may update these terms. The date at the top shows when they last changed. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms. Changes do not retroactively alter a signed project agreement.

12. Contact

Questions about these terms: use our contact form.

Terms of service