The most important and essential document a freelance designer should have is a rock solid and reliable contract. The worst thing is though, freelance web designers or graphic designers, especially when they are just starting out, can ill afford the expense of paying a lawyer to draw up a decent contract.
As a possible cost effective solution for you, in this article, we have highlighted some freely available contract sample templates you could use. You are allowed to use the sample in their entirety, by simply filling in the relevant personal, client and project details, and use it as your own. Or, you could use them as a reference when writing your own. Which ever way you choose to use these sample contracts, it is recommended that you still have your contract draft checked by a lawyer. Protect yourselves.

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to get your pricing right in a competitive marketplace. Do you charge per hour, per project or some arcane combination of the two? Are you so confident in yourself that you’re charging three times the market average, but sitting next to your inbox waiting for a client? Or are you fighting off hordes of clientele, working 22 hours a day between caffeine infusions, and still barely making rent? Pricing’s not only tough, it’s also a fiercely guarded secret for most people.

Hi. I'm a starter theme called _s, or underscores, if you like. I'm a theme meant for hacking so don't use me as a Parent Theme. Instead try turning me into the next, most awesome, WordPress theme out there. That's what I'm here for.

My ultra-minimal CSS might make me look like theme tartare but that means less stuff to get in your way when you're designing your awesome theme. Here are some of the other more interesting things you'll find here ...

In the spring of 1955, as the Cold War intensified and the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated at a shocking pace, America — as it had many times before — detonated an atomic weapon in the Nevada desert. The test was not especially noteworthy. The weapon’s “yield” was not dramatically larger or smaller than that of previous A-bombs; the brighter-than-the-sun flash of light, the mushroom cloud and the staggering power unleashed by the weapon were all byproducts familiar to anyone who had either witnessed or paid attention to coverage of earlier tests.

And yet today, six decades later, at a time when the prospect of nuclear tests by “rogue states” like North Korea and Iran is once again making headlines and driving international negotiations and debate, the very banality of one long-forgotten atomic test in 1955 feels somehow more chilling than other more memorable or era-defining episodes from the Cold War. After all, whether conducted in the name of deterrence, defense or pure scientific research, the May 1955 blast (the results of which are pictured in this gallery) was in a very real sense routine.

A pocket Seinfeld-calendar type habit change aide.

C is a general purpose, structured programming language. Its instructions consist of terms that resemble algebraic expressions, augmented by certain English keywords such as if, else, for, do and while. In this respect it resembles high level structured programming languages such as Pascal and Fortran. C also contains additional features, that allow it to be used at a lower level, thus bridging the gap between machine language and high level language. This flexibility allows C to be used for systems programming as well as for applications programming. Therefore C is called a middle level language.  

C is characterized by the ability to write very concise source programs, due in part to the large number of operators included within the language. It has a relatively small instruction set, though actual implementations include extensive library functions which enhance the basic instructions. C encourages users to create their own library fuctions.

retina.js is an open source script that makes it easy to serve
high-resolution images to devices with retina displays

With this free WordPress theme any non-profit organization can have an effective website. It includes features to showcase your programs and events, and several elements are easily customizable. Organizations with limited budgets can present a professional image with this WordPress theme.

The game is a procedurally generated flick-screen shmup/platformer that plays a bit like the classic Cybernoid, featuring impressively huge maps, a multitude of enemies and more than a few bosses. Somehow, all this has been crammed into 16 mere kilobytes of memory.

FUEL: REFUELED is an enhancement modification for the game FUEL, which brings multiple bug-fixes, improvements and the addition of various new content.

wysihtml5 is an open source rich text editor based on HTML5 technology and the progressive-enhancement approach. It uses a sophisticated security concept and aims to generate fully valid HTML5 markup by preventing unmaintainable tag soups and inline styles.
Features

It's fast and lightweight (smaller than TinyMCE, Aloha, ...)
Auto-linking of urls as-you-typewysihtml5 is an open source rich text editor based on HTML5 technology and the progressive-enhancement approach. It uses a sophisticated security concept and aims to generate fully valid HTML5 markup by preventing unmaintainable tag soups and inline styles.
Generates valid and semantic HTML5 markup (even when the content is pasted from MS Word)
Uses class names instead of inline styles
Unifies line break handling across browsers
Uses sandboxed iframes in order to prevent identity theft through XSS
Speech-input for Chrome
No jQuery required

Initial directory setup, style guide and pattern primer. Intended as a starting point for my own projects, available for others to fork and adapt for theirs.

Reveal the theme template file used to render the displayed page, via the footer and/or template tag.

Designers and developers know that it can sometimes be confusing and frustrating to determine the exact template being utilized to render the currently displayed page in WordPress. Sometimes page or category specific templates exist, or a page/post has been set by the post author to use a particular template, or the current theme doesn't employ certain templates causing WordPress to fall back to others.

This plugin relieves the aggravation by assisting designers and developers by displaying the template being used to render the currently displayed page in WordPress. This typically appears in the site's footer (though only if the theme follows the recommended practice of calling the wp_footer() template tag) at some point. Also, obviously this can only universally apply to the site if said footer is actually used on every page.

Quickly generate an HTML5 page structure

jQuery Plugin that casts photorealistic shadows. Perfect for eye-catching demos and landing pages.

Unstuck is a new in-the-moment approach to personal growth for anyone who wants to live better every day. Combining personalized digital tools with tips and know-how from a community of other people facing stuck moments, Unstuck makes it easy to get on-demand coaching whenever you need it.

The first is an improved version of the original AppleScript which presents a dialog box from which a selection of local volumes to be ejected can be made. An example of its usefulness might be that it provides a reliable method for quickly ejecting a MacBook's mounted local volumes for users on the go. I've configured it as a "Run AppleScript" step for an Automator-based Mac OS X Service called "Unmounter" and assigned it the keyboard shortcut of (Command-Control-Shift-E) in System Preferences on my system.

The second is a more robust version of the AppleScript included in my first reply to the original hint topic. It attempts to automatically unmount all unmountable local volumes, and if it finds none, attempts to mount any local volumes that are available. I've configured it as a "Run AppleScript" step for an Automator-based Mac OS X Service called "Toggle Available Local Volumes" and assigned it the keyboard shortcut (Command-Option-Control-Shift-E) in System Preferences on my system.

Exploration sandbox game

Members Only is a WordPress plugin that allows you to make your blog only viewable to visitors that are logged in. If a visitor is not logged in, they will be redirected either to the WordPress login page or a page of your choice. Once logged in they can be redirected back to the page that they originally requested. You can also protect your feeds whilst allowing registered user access to them by using Feed Keys.

A very simple way to quickly password protect your WordPress site with a single password. Integrates seamlessly into your WordPress privacy settings.

New user moderation, site lock-down or members area, users can chose their own password and must enter their name when registering.

This plugin lets you turn WordPress into a proper easily navigable CMS. Having a site made up mostly of pages in the form of a tree (an information site for example) was always a pain until I wrote this to help me out. I have had lots of feedback about it over the last few months and more and more people are finding ways they can use it to improve the navigation and usability of their sites

List Category Posts allows you to list posts from a category into a post/page using the [catlist] shortcode.

The shortcode accepts a category name or id, the order in which you want the posts to display, and the number of posts to display. You can also display the post author, date, excerpt, custom field values, even the content! The [catlist] shortcode can be used as many times as needed with different arguments on each post/page.

Change your sidebar content with different pages. Avoid creating multiple sidebars and duplicating widgets by adding check boxes to each widget in the admin (as long as it is written in the WordPress version 2.8 format) which will either show or hide the widgets on every site page. Great for avoiding extra coding and keeping your sidebars clean.

Improve the usability of your WordPress CMS system. This plug-in creates a dashboard widget with clearly labeled large buttons of the most common tasks one would perform when using wordpress as a content management system.

Ren'Py is a visual novel engine that helps you use words, images, and sounds to tell stories with the computer. These can be both visual novels and life simulation games. The easy to learn script language allows you to efficiently write large visual novels, while its Python scripting is enough for complex simulation games.

Ren'Py is open source and free for commercial use. It supports Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Android.

Establishing clear expectations before beginning work with a client will help you avoid conflicts and get paid — and a contract is the best way to do that.

This tool will guide you through creating your own contract and allow you to edit it to fit each job.

Don't worry if you find a section that doesn't apply to your work. The final contract can be downloaded as a Word-compatible text document, which you can edit to your heart's content.

Fixie.js is an open source tool that automatically adds filler content to HTML documents.
Adding lorem ipsum text to HTML documents involves copy-pasting, manual editing, and increasingly unwieldy code.
By interpreting your semantic HTML5 tags, Fixie will automagically add the right type of content in the right places. Headings, paragraphs, links, images, sections... trust me, it's all there. That way you can focus on your design, instead of finding the right filler content.

There are many great theme option frameworks out there already, like the Options Framework, and the UP Theme Framework. Which is great, alot of this frameworks ideas, and functionality has been built upon the knowledge gained from those frameworks. But neither of them provided me with the extendability i needed/wanted. What i really wanted to do was merge those frameworks and add a little spice. I wanted a few specific things that have been the core reason for this framework.

Section Tabs - I wanted each settings section to have its own "tab" which can be clicked through.
Use the WordPress Core Settings API - I wanted the settings to use the core WordPress functions for creating/editing settings (no point reinventing the wheel).
Custom Error Handling - Inline with the custom tabs i wanted to be able to display error totals, and custom messages for each section/setting.
Easily Extendable - I wanted to be able to extend the framework for custom use applications. For settings fields and custom validation.
Customisable - I wanted to be able to customise the functionality, and style without hacking at the core.
This is why the NHP Theme Options Framework has been created. Every function/action can be customised, with more hook points and configuration options being added with every update.

Dataset is a JavaScript client-side data transformation and management library. Dataset makes managing client-side data easy by handling loading, parsing, sorting, querying & manipulating data from all sorts of sources.

documenting building an 8-bit computer from scratch

CanJS is an MIT-licensed, client-side, JavaScript framework that makes building rich web applications easy