The Memorial Code has been established by leading organisations in order to provide basic principles and guidance in relation to the creation of memorial websites. It is expected that all memorial website providers should work within these guidelines to ensure that the rights and needs of the many vulnerable bereaved people are respected at all times.

Guidance Notes

The following agreed Notes accompany and help support the 5 Point Code of Ethics:

The published Code of Ethics has been kept as simple as possible to keep it accessible, therefore additional Guidance Notes have been created to assist in interpretation as and when required:

Guidance Note 1 – In-house Memorial Websites to Public Figures

Exception may be made in Point 4 in respect of creating memorial websites to deceased public figures under the following conditions:

• The person concerned must clearly have been a famous public figure or personality during their life, and not just because of their death.
• Such memorials should be created as a way of providing examples of websites to potential site users and not as part of a systematic creation of websites.

Guidance Note 2 – Policy in the event of closure of service provider before expiry of hosting period

Memorial website providers should always ensure sufficient financing to be able to honour any long term hosting promise provided to users. In the unfortunate event of closure before hosting periods have been fully honoured, the minimum action that should be taken is as follows:

• Contact all Memorial Website Creators sufficiently in advance of closure so that they have the opportunity to download all or any important information first.
• Look to try to transfer the contents of the memorial websites to another service provider at no cost to the creator. [Other memorial code members should look favourably on any such request as long as storage space requirements are not unreasonably onerous]