The Power To Hold Your Campaign Hostage

We recently heard a story of a small campaign that ran into some serious web problems. First, they spent a lot of money on setting up a campaign website. After paying north of $4000 for the website – they then had to shell out an additional $90/hour for updates. On top of that, they had problems getting in touch with the designer or actually getting the changes they wanted done in a reasonable time frame.

We call that a digital hostage situation. And for a political campaign with limited finances, it’s a dangerous position to be in.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Most websites today are built with a content management system (CMS). This allows non-technical users the ability to add, edit and delete content and pages. However, most content management systems — including the popular Wordpress — may not be easy to use for inexperienced users. CMS systems like Joomla or Drupal can be even more difficult to use. Add plugins and customizations, and many people won’t know the first thing to do to update a site. One wrong click, and who knows what could happen!

Even our own system, Online Candidate, has become more complicated as we’ve added additional features and functionality. Our goal from the start has been to keep the system as focused and intuitive as possible, but we’ve found that our help system has expanded along with the feature set. The bottom line is that there’s a learning curve involved with any content management system.

Here are other advantages for campaigns using a CMS on their website:

Costs. Many web designers will charge a 15 minute minimum to make updates. More active campaigns may update their websites daily or even several times in a day for a fast-breaking topic. Those charges will add up fast. Better to have a volunteer make the edits.

Speed. Another problem with relying on an outsider to update the campaign website is that of timeliness. Speed of response is critical for a political campaign. There’s no guarantee your web designer is going to be able to update your campaign website quick enough. A 24 or 48 hour turnaround time isn’t going to cut it.

Control. You wouldn’t send out a campaign brochure with misspellings or typos. Would you rely on an outsider to get everything right on your campaign website? And if there is a problem with an update, how long will it take to correct the issue?

Even if the candidate or campaign manager does not actually do the updates, at least one person in the campaign should have access to the website and the ability to make a certain amount changes or additions.

If a web designer or developer won’t allow you the ability to update your own content, it should immediately raise a red flag. No matter who designs your website, you should know how the website can be updated before it is created. The last thing you want is to have your web presence compromised… or held hostage.

Online Candidate doesn’t take hostages! You are free to add, edit and delete your content whenever and from wherever you choose.