This category includes templates that create links to external resources. Generally, templates should only be made for links to sites that meet one or more of these three criteria:

1. The site is a commonly linked primary source (e.g. UK Intellectual Property Office).
2. The site is a high-quality reliable source that covers the subject in greater detail than Wikipedia can or should.
3. The site is a Wikimedia sisterproject (e.g. Wiktionary). These should be categorized in Category:Interwiki link templates.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to External link templates.

Pages in this category should be moved to subcategories where applicable. This category may require frequent maintenance to avoid becoming too large. It should directly contain very few, if any, pages and should mainly contain subcategories.

The pages listed in this category are meant to be templates providing external links. This page is part of Wikipedia's administration and not part of the encyclopedia. Further template category notes This category contains pages in the template namespace. It should not be used to categorize articles or pages in other namespaces. To add a template to this category: If the template has a separate documentation page (usually called "Template:template name/doc"), add  [[Category:External link templates]] to the <includeonly> section at the bottom of that page. Otherwise, add  <noinclude>[[Category:External link templates]]</noinclude> to the end of the template code, making sure it starts on the same line as the code's last character.

Wikipedia prohibits the linking of copyright violations, malware and spam regardless of whether the link is typed directly or placed with a template. All links and link templates should be used only in ways that comply with the Wikipedia:External links and Wikipedia:Citing sources guidelines.