Instant website

(photo: kalhh) 

For grass-roots groups and issues campaigns, you can thrown up a website in a half hour using Blogger, Google's blogging platform. ¶ 

It's free, and easy to administer and hand off.

Blogger is not the right tool for everything, but offers these advantages.

• Hosting in Google's cloud, including images and video.
• True content-management system.
• Professional design.
• Easy to use for new users.
• No viruses or patches.
  
• Free subdomain on the blogspot.com domain, transferable (see below).

These services are free, including unlimited image hosting. A custom domain costs extra ($10/year if purchased through Blogger, less elsewhere).

It's trivial to configure a Blogger website with a static landing page rather than a dynamic page of blog posts. 

(An example: my personal campaign website for Town Meeting in Arlington, Massachusetts. But many active campaigns would be wise to keep the standard blog home page with links to other pages from there.)

No platform is best for every purpose, but especially if you work on local issues or grass roots campaigns, Blogger is an arrow that belongs in your quiver.