Cemetery Website Etiquette: Dos and Don'ts for Online Memorials

An online memorial page can comfort a family for decades or upset them within a week. The difference usually comes down to small editorial decisions made by someone with good intentions and no guidance.

Here are the rules our cemetery clients settle on, drawn from what has gone well and what has gone badly across sites in Australia, the UK and the United States.

Do ask before you publish

Names, dates and plot locations for historical burials sit in the public record. Photographs, tributes and biographical detail for a recent death do not. Get written permission from the person who arranged the interment, and keep it on file. A short form during the arrangement covers this without an awkward conversation later.

Don't turn a memorial into a feature list

Candle animations, background music, floating hearts and countdown timers all exist in memorial plugins. They age fast and they read as decoration on top of someone's death. A photograph, the dates, a few hundred words and space for messages carries more weight than any effect.

Do moderate every message before it appears

Open comment boxes on memorial pages attract spam within a fortnight, and occasionally something worse. Family disputes play out in public more often than people expect. Hold every tribute for approval, name a moderator on your committee, and publish your moderation policy so nobody feels singled out.

Don't publish a full date of birth alongside a full name for the living

Memorial pages often list surviving relatives. Combining a living person's full name, birth date and home town gives identity thieves a starting point. List relationships without dates, and never publish an address.

Do plan for the page to outlive everyone involved

Families assume a memorial page lasts forever. Say plainly what you can promise. If the page stays for the life of the interment rights, write that down. If your committee cannot commit past five years, say that instead. Broken promises here damage trust more than an honest limit.

Don't let the page become a payment gate

Charging a family to keep their own memorial page online, or hiding photographs behind an upgrade, causes lasting resentment. Charge once for the work if you must charge. Studio September builds cemetery sites without subscription contracts for exactly this reason.

Do write about death in plain words

Euphemism creates confusion at the worst possible moment. "Passed into the arms of the eternal" leaves a reader unsure whether a burial has taken place. Write died, buried, cremated, interred. Clarity is a kindness.

Don't show graves without checking the frame

Photographs of headstones for a memorial page should show the memorial and little else. Catching another family's grave in the background, or a mourner in the distance, invites a complaint you cannot undo once the image is indexed.

Do give families a way to correct the record

Spelling of names, dates, regimental numbers and maiden names all get entered wrong. Put a visible correction link on every memorial page and answer it within a week. Genealogists will thank you and your records improve for free.

Don't let old pages rot

Dead links, missing images and a copyright notice from 2016 tell a visitor nobody is looking after the site, which they will read as nobody looking after the grounds. Review memorial pages once a year. Ten minutes each.

A short policy you can adopt

Item	Position
Consent	Written, from the arranger of the interment
Tributes	Held for moderation, published within 48 hours
Removal requests	Honoured within 7 days, no questions asked
Corrections	Link on every page, actioned within 7 days
Duration	Stated in writing at the point of creation
Cost to family	None after the initial arrangement

Adapt the wording, publish it, and point to it from your memorial pages. Most complaints disappear once people can see the rules.