It's simply not enough in today's world for a campaign to throw together some HTML files or use starter templates as their main campaign website and then say the work is over. With the growing rate of technology and with the way constituents are now accessing, analyzing, and spreading information, it's imperative to connect your offline actions to your online actions. Here's where many go wrong.

1. Domain name ( example.com ) - Stumbling out of the starting blocks is never good but it's not rare to see a candidate with some kind of awkward combination of letters, numbers, or runic symbols in their website address. Simple rules you must follow include making sure you can fit the website address on virtually anything, being able to say it to someone without them having to ask you to clarify, and making it brandable.

What to do: FirstnameLastname.com or LastnameYear.com.

What not to do: NameforOffice.com as it can get ridiculously long and nearly impossible to put on lawn signs, flyers, advertisements, etc.

2. Web Hosting (GoDaddy, Yahoo, etc) - After getting your domain name, you now need to find a nice home for it on the Internet. Where your website resides is crucial, especially if it's a high-profile campaign. There are horror stories of campaign websites crashing the day before or on Election Day. Don't let that happen.

What to do: When it comes to web hosting, you usually get what you pay for. Learn about databases, uptime, technical support, PHP, Ruby, bandwidth, FTP/SSH, and - most of all - how many other websites are on the same server as you. The more websites, the slower your website so the best option is a VPS (Virtual Private Server) but it can get expensive. Shop around!

What not to do: Setup a GoDaddy or Yahoo account and click your mouse in triump. Avoid big name providers as they might end up giving you shiny trinkets that you don't really need instead of what is truly necessary.