NOTE: This article was originally written when the site used WordPress. This site is now on Webflow, which the author was not familiar with at the time this article was originally written.

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For many political campaigns, WordPress is the right solution for building a political campaign website.

Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Political Campaign Website

WordPress Sites Can Be Built Inexpensively

WordPress is an open-source content management system used for building websites. If you are not familiar with the concept of open source, this means that the underlying code is freely available. And this is in keeping with the overall mission of WordPress: "software designed for everyone, emphasizing accessibility, performance, security, and ease of use."While WordPress itself is free, there are costs associated with building and maintaining a site. Manage your costs, stick to a budget, and don't be distracted by all the possibilities of what your site could do. Overbuilding a site is one quick way to blow a budget.

WordPress Is a Well-Known Platform

WordPress powers more than 25% of the internet. Its widespread popularity simplifies the process of finding developers and designers capable of creating and maintaining a political campaign site. Besides searching online and asking your network for recommended web developers and agencies, try looking on Meetup.com for local WordPress groups. They may be able to connect you with companies and individuals interested in working on your campaign as a paid vendor, consultant, or volunteer.With so many businesses and personal sites powered by WordPress, you may also find that staffers and volunteers are already experienced WordPress users, thereby reducing training time and costs for updating and generally maintaining your campaign site.

WordPress Is Flexible and Customizable

You can alter the look of your site by changing its theme. Adding in plugins opens the door for functionality that is not included within WordPress. With individuals and companies all over the world creating free and paid themes and plugins, its usually possible to find what you need has already been written and can be added to your site. If what you are looking for is not available, an experienced developer can create the code you need.

WordPress Sites Can Be Started Quickly

A basic site can be built in a matter of hours from purchasing a domain to having content available online. Development time increases as site size, functionality, and customizations increase.

WordPress Has Been Used by Political Campaigns Large and Small

Matt Mullenweg, a founding developer of WordPress, tweeted that many of the Democratic Candidates running for President in 2020 use WordPress.https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1142073844024455168WordPress has showcased use of its platform in its advertising.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tslz_UassYI

Reasons Not to Use WordPress for Your Political Campaign Website

WordPress is not your only option. Drupal, Ghost, Google Sites, Joomla, Medium, Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix are a few other possibilities that may be appropriate for your campaign. Similarly to WordPress, many of these services offer features and functionality for a range of purposes. Others, like Shopify, are focused on e-commerce and may be more difficult in some respects to use for your campaign website.WordPress does not natively include features needed for running a campaign, like collecting donations, managing volunteers, tracking door knocks, emailing supporters, etc. Meeting these needs can be accomplished by installing plugins (example: CiviCRM) and / or integrating with third party services. Alternatively, there are "campaign-in-a-box" options offering most, if not all, features needed for running and managing a political campaign. See our list of Software and Service Providers for Running Political Campaigns for suggestions.

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