Download This Disclaimer Template Absolutely Free

If you have a website or are in the process of setting one up, it is good practice and a sensible precaution to include a disclaimer as part of your site.  While this may be obvious for businesses entering into contracts or selling goods and services, it can be far less obvious for people running personal or information websites.

However, in today’s increasingly litigious society, it makes sense to take the simple precaution of adding a disclaimer page to your site, which protects you in the event that anyone tries to take action against you for any perceived grievance in any connection at all with your website.

Disclaimer Examples:
Downloading Your Free Disclaimer Template

Use this link to download a ready made Disclaimer Template absolutely FREE for use on your own site.  The template opens in Microsoft Word.  All I ask in return is that you leave in place the credit and links at the bottom of the disclaimer notice.  You can amend the rest of the disclaimer as necessary to suit your own site, but it should be suitable for most straightforward information and personal websites. 

Please read the notice at the bottom of this page before adding the template to your website.

Disclaimer Examples:
Amending and Customising Your Disclaimer

No one disclaimer notice can adequately cover all websites, but the disclaimer example provided is perfectly adequate for any basic website and is specifically intended to cover smaller, personal websites.  You will need to look for something more specialised if your website involves memberships, age restrictions, subscriptions or lots of financial transactions, sales of products or downloads, etc.

If you do have a site that engages in e-commerce, you will also need a separate Terms of Sale to cover your transactions, guarantees, returns policy, etc.  The kind of disclaimer you have will relate directly to the degree of risk involved in operating your website.  This free disclaimer is aimed very much at websites that do not involve the provision of specific high risk services, professional advice or significant e-commerce.  It will be ideal for an individual artist, personal website or information/content site aimed at generating Adsense revenue.  It also has a section referring to links to other websites, which is useful for websites recommending affiliate products.

On some websites the disclaimer is referred to, or included in, a Terms of Use or Terms and Conditions statement, and it can sometimes include a privacy policy too.  It doesn’t really matter what you call it, but it does need to be accessible and easily available.  The reason you can’t just tuck it away somewhere hard to find is that if something did go wrong and you were challenged legally, the disclaimer may be seen as invalid if it was hard to find.  The best way to set it up is to give it a page on its own in your top level directory, and put a discreet link to it from every page on your site, perhaps at the bottom of the page.

The template provided is based on English law and jurisdiction.  While the basic principles hold good you may wish to check for variations in relation to your own jurisdiction and make any necessary adjustments

A copyright section is included in the ‘Licence To Use This Website’ section of the disclaimer.  This can be of particular relevance if you are an artist, and there is an additional section in square brackets relating to copyright of images which you can leave in if your site contains a lot of images of artwork.

How To Use The Disclaimer

You disclaimer example template is in the form of a Word Document, which you can download.  You should then cut and paste this into a web page that you create for your Disclaimer.  If you are not sure about how to add the credit links at the bottom of the disclaimer, you can see the HTML code here.  If you are not the webmaster for your own site you will need to ask your web designer to do it for you.  Once you upload it that’s it!  You can forget about it, knowing that you have that additional bit of protection which will help to discourage legal challenges.

Now for the disclaimer on the disclaimer!

(I suppose it was inevitable wasn’t it…)

By using this free disclaimer template you accept the following Conditions Of Use in full:

You may download, print, amend and reproduce the disclaimer notice only on condition that the links and credits at the end of the disclaimer are retained exactly as written without amendment.

While every effort is made to ensure that this disclaimer template conforms with all applicable legal requirements, I do not warrant that it is complete, comprehensive or accurate, or commit to its being updated.  You agree that making this template available shall not be seen as the provision of legal advice, and therefore I am not liable in any way for its use.

In no event shall I be liable for any incidental, indirect, consequential or special damages of any kind, or any damages whatsoever, including, without limitation, those resulting from loss of profit, loss of contracts, goodwill, data, information, income, expected savings or business relationships, whether or not advised of the possibility of such damage, arising out of or in connection with the use of this template.

Enjoy!