Terms and licence

Who you are contracting with

Pattern Paste is operated by JD, trading as Pattern Paste, based in the United Kingdom. Your licence, your account and everything else in these terms are between you and JD, and they are governed by the law of England and Wales.

Who sells to you depends on where you are. If you are in the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and Iceland, JD is the seller and Stripe processes the payment on our behalf. If you are anywhere else, the sale is made by Stripe as merchant of record: it is the legal seller for that transaction, charges and remits your local VAT or sales tax, issues the invoice and handles refunds, so the payment itself is governed by Stripe's buyer terms. Either way, everything about the product and its licence is governed here.

Acceptance. By browsing the site, creating an account or subscribing, you accept these terms, the refund policy and the privacy policy. If you do not accept them, do not use the site. Continued use after a change to the terms is acceptance of the change.

What the product is

Core Patterns are WordPress core-block markup. You copy one into the block editor, where it becomes content in your own database and takes your theme's colours, type and spacing. It makes no connection back to us.

Designed Patterns are finished compositions supplied by the Pattern Paste companion plugin. Their text, images and links remain editable WordPress blocks, while the plugin supplies the protected composition, designed appearance and optional behaviour. It is not sold separately and comes with catalogue access.

The active catalogue is 371 Core Patterns, of which 62 are free, and 57 Designed Patterns. Designed Pattern pages state the plugin requirement before you copy.

The licence

Access grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide licence to use the markup of any pattern you have access to. Under it you may:

• Use core patterns on unlimited sites, your own or a client's, commercial or not
• Use Designed Patterns on sites where you install the companion plugin; its site allowance governs updates and support rather than whether installed code keeps running
• Change it however you like, including beyond recognition
• Hand the finished site to a client, who may keep running it without any licence of their own
• Keep using anything you have already published, forever, whether or not your access continues

What the licence does not allow

• Reselling the markup, modified or not, as a pattern, a snippet, a block or a download
• Bundling it into a theme, plugin, template, page-builder kit or starter site that you distribute or sell, on a marketplace or anywhere else
• Building a competing library out of it
• Sharing your account or passing your access to somebody else
• Claiming the designs as your own work to sell as designs

The line is the difference between building sites with the patterns, which is what they are for, and redistributing the patterns themselves, which is our business. If what you want to do sits on that line, ask at [email protected] and we will answer plainly.

Acceptable use

You must not use the site, your account or anything you copy from it:

• for anything unlawful, or to infringe anyone's intellectual property or other rights
• to commit fraud, including payment fraud, chargeback abuse, sharing an account, or claiming a refund for patterns you have kept using
• to interfere with the site's security or operation: no probing, scanning, malware, credential attacks, or attempts to bypass the paywall or sign-in
• to scrape, bulk-copy or mirror the catalogue, previews or markup, whether by hand, script or automated agent
• to send spam or unsolicited messages using anything obtained from the site

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close your account, and end the subscription with it, if you materially breach these terms, if a payment fails or is reversed, if we reasonably suspect fraud or a security risk, or for repeated or serious breaches of the acceptable-use rules. We will tell you why unless the law prevents it or doing so would help the abuse continue. What you have already pasted into a site is unaffected, exactly as when access ends any other way. You can close your account yourself at any time from the account page.

What happens when access ends

Nothing on any site you have already built. Pasted markup is your content and we have no way to reach it, no wish to, and no term here that lets us try. What ends is access to this site: you stop being able to copy new paid sections and stop receiving new ones.

The Pattern Paste plugin keeps working on the sites where it is already installed, and so do the blocks it has rendered: what is installed keeps rendering, exactly as it does today. What ends is updates and support. No check of ours runs when a visitor loads one of your pages, so there is nothing about a lapsed subscription that a reader of your site could ever see.

The companion plugin

The Pattern Paste plugin is software rather than markup, so it is licensed separately and on its own terms. It is not sold on its own and it is not a free download: it is distributed to people with catalogue access, on either plan: on Core it holds the Core Patterns and Styled looks, on Everything every Designed Pattern too. Updates and support cover unlimited sites. Unlimited covers your own sites and the sites you build for clients; an account may not be pooled or resold between unrelated businesses. That allowance applies for the paid period you bought. If it changes for a future renewal, we will email you at least 30 days before it applies. WordPress may share plugin files across a multisite network; this allowance covers updates and support, not isolated copies of the code. Its PHP carries the GPL, as anything distributed for WordPress must, which is a licence on the code you are given and not an undertaking to give it to anyone who asks. A block it registers keeps a frozen contract, so a fix we ship reaches every page you have published without breaking one.

Deactivating the plugin removes a Designed Pattern's composition, appearance and optional behaviour, and the content inside stays on the page as a plain stack. That is by design and it is stated on every Designed Pattern.

What you need to be able to do

to a theme that does not follow WordPress's own preset system, or support a page builder that is not Paste a Core Pattern into the WordPress editor, or install the companion plugin once before pasting a Designed Pattern. Point image blocks at your own media and edit the native blocks. There is no code to write. What we cannot do is build your site, adapt a section to a theme that does not follow WordPress's own preset system, or support a page builder that is not to a theme that does not follow WordPress's own preset system, or support a page builder that is not the block editor.

Patterns are tested against WordPress 7.0 to 7.1. Older WordPress, classic themes and non-block editors are out of scope.

Images and fonts

Static photo blocks include reviewed WordPress photographs through public image URLs. The WordPress Photo Directory photographs are available under CC0; they are not exclusive to us. Image sources, artwork and any exceptions are documented on our image credits page. Pasting a pattern does not upload external files to your Media Library. You can replace images in the editor. Query patterns use your own post images, and video examples need your own clip.

No pattern ships or loads a font. Type comes from your theme unless a variation explicitly declares a built-in font stack.

Payment

Access is a subscription, £49 a year, shown on the site and charged through Stripe at the start of each year until you cancel; every plan is billed yearly. Prices are in pounds sterling. In the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and Iceland the price shown is the full price and nothing is added. Elsewhere Stripe, as merchant of record, adds your local VAT or sales tax at checkout, and billing, invoices and the mechanics of that payment are governed by Stripe's buyer terms. Cancel from your account page at any time, or at Stripe's billing portal with the email you paid with; access runs to the end of the period already paid for. Stripe emails you a reminder 7 days before each renewal, with the amount and a link to cancel.

The price you pay is the price shown when you subscribe, for that period. We can change our prices. A change reaches a running subscription at its next renewal, never mid-period, and we email you at least 30 days before a renewal that would charge more than the last one, so you can cancel before it is taken.

The trial

There is no free trial at present. An account created while one was open kept the days it was promised, and anything copied during it stays licensed under the terms above.

Refunds

The refund policy is its own document: patternpaste.com/refunds. In outline: if it is not working out, tell us within 14 days of a first payment and we refund you, unless your account shows you have copied a large part of the library or downloaded several themes in that time; a renewal you did not mean to keep is refunded on the same terms if you ask within 14 days of it; anything broken is fixed or refunded at any time; and a refund ends the subscription without touching anything you have already pasted. Statutory rights in England and Wales are unaffected by anything here.

Warranty and liability

The site is provided as it is and as available. We do not promise that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or always reachable, and we may change or withdraw parts of it; what you have already pasted is unaffected.

Patterns are provided as they are. We test each one in real WordPress across the supported versions and in more than one theme, and we publish what was measured, but we cannot promise a pattern suits a purpose you have in mind or works alongside every plugin in existence.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death, personal injury or fraud. Otherwise our liability to you is limited to what you have paid us.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms; the date at the top says when they last changed. A change never applies retroactively to a pattern you have already used.