Party sites must continue when leadership and volunteer staff change, and we have probably all seen cases where websites languished because someone with the passwords moved on to other parts of life. So, plan for that change at the outset.

First, remember that your website is going to incur costs, like domain registration and hosting costs. If your group does not have a "corporate" credit card, consider getting a temporary one, with at least a one year expiration, because hosting services tend to continually bother you with notices about an expired credit card even when it's a long time until the next billing event.

Sandy A. adds: "Domain registration can be for more than a year but hosting fees are paid monthly or annually. If your treasurer will tie these expenses to the bank account then they can be paid automatically. Remember to re-connect your domain fees when the treasurer moves the account to a new bank [or if you move to a new treasurer! -- ed.]. Losing your domain name because somebody forgot to pay the bill can be very expensive. Remember, your domain name is linked on other websites and if you lose it then those links will be broken."

Yup. Happened to Clackamas County once. New treasurer, new email... no renewal... panic.

Second, your domain registrar and hosting service are going to want to communicate with you, and with anyone who replaces you, so you can make your life easier by obtaining a different email address than your personal one. Also, your registration email address is more likely to end up in public view, so obtaining a non-personal address helps protect you against SPAM: it's easier to just change the registration address to a new one than it is to change your personal address AND inform all your friends and associates.

Consider using GMail.Com for hosting and domain management email messages. You can set up a free email account with them, and then FORWARD the mail coming to that address to your personal address. Here are the reasons to do that:

• Your personal address remains private, invisible to the rest of the world, and not listed in the public registration information available to every evil spammer in the world.
• Because the address is forwarded to you privately, you don't have to check an additional account.
• When staff responsibilities change, it's easy to make the necessary change of forwarding, and continuity is not disrupted.
• Avoids the cost of "private" listing with the registrar, and still lets people who look up your information contact you.
• When some evil spammer does get hold of that registration address, you don't care, because it only takes a few minutes to change it, and you don't have to give up that private, personal address you love so much.

For all accounts, make sure that someone else in the group has full capability to log in to all accounts set up to support the site, so that if you decide to take a permanent relocation to Jamaica in the middle of the night, the site does not become orphaned while you retire to the beach. Besides keeping notes in computerized form that are occasionally sent to party leadership for reporting and backup, be sure to keep a paper trail of things you do. Think of those notes as part of your disaster recovery plan.