An Alternative To Wordpress for Political Campaign Websites

WordPress is a very popular content management system (CMS) that runs about a quarter of all websites as of this writing.

Many political campaigns use WordPress as their website CMS. It’s a powerful solution, but whether it’s the right solution for your campaign depends on your needs, budget, and technical abilities.

WordPress uses themes for design. There are thousands of free and low-priced ones available. There are also a number of political WordPress themes available. However, all themes require installation and customization. If you purchase a theme with a lot of bells and whistles, the customization can take quite a bit of time.

WordPress plugins provide additional functionality without requiring custom programming. Again, there are thousands of free and paid plugins available. They may include forms, calendar features, and so on. However, for plugins to work, they must be installed, configured for use, and kept up to date.

While the WordPress software may be open source (and free) and themes are fairly inexpensive, getting the site configured and customized takes a lot of time. For a person without technical skills, there can be a steep learning curve.

You can get your site built on the cheap. However, you usually get what you pay for, so you might not want to put your online presence in the hands of an inexperienced developer or with a poor design. A WordPress template can become a mess in the wrong hands, or the site may not be optimized for search engines.

Another downside to WordPress is that you need to perform backups, security updates, and any necessary upgrades yourself. If you don’t keep up with updates, you run the risk of having your site hacked. Because WordPress powers so much of the web, it’s the biggest target for online hackers.

So, is a WordPress campaign website worth it? Ultimately, that’s up to you. It’s certainly not a bad choice, but only if the site is properly designed and configured.

Though we now offer WordPress Campaign Websites, the Online Candidate platform has been developed and refined to make websites simple to update, even for people with little technical skill. It contains built-in tools and functionality specific to political candidates. The templating system is built-in and is simple but very flexible. Even our custom designs are affordable because we have a fast and efficient production process, allowing us to pass on the cost savings to our clients.

Learn more about our Online Candidate political website platform and learn why hundreds of campaigns use us every election cycle.