Setting up a political website

First things first: pick your domain name. Be careful with this – you’ll need to live with it. There are two standard versions of domain name to select:

• yourname or nameforconstituency

You then need to select the primary domain extension you want: .com, .co.uk, .org.uk, .net and so on. Pick one to be the primary domain name that you put on all your literature (my suggestion is to use .co.uk as this is a specifically UK address), but also purchase the main others to prevent domain squatting by your opposition and so that you can ensure that anyone who types the wrong one will get forwarded to your website.

Second: Think about what you want to include on your website. Local news, issues, photos, biographies, social media (eg. Facebook, Flickr, Twitter) etc.

Third: Install your CMS and design your website. You could use one of my pre-designed WordPress templates for free and set up on your own hosting. Or I can install, host and set up your website for you, for a small fee.

Four: Write your content, select your images, and publish it online.

Five: Promote your website! Put it on your campaign literature, business cards, take out Google Adsense ads… any way you can!