Campaign page and volunteer join link

There are two public URLs, both built from the campaign record you edit in the dashboard, so there is nothing separate to maintain. Your campaign page link opens a card with the candidate name, the office sought, a badge with state and district, a badge with the election date, and the campaign name. Your join link (`/join/your-campaign`) opens the supporter sign-up form.

Both addresses end in your campaign's slug, generated when the campaign is created from the campaign name plus a short unique suffix (for example, smith-for-city-council-k3x9p2qa). The suffix is random, so the address cannot be guessed from the candidate's name, and the slug does not change.

Each page carries a title and description built from your record ("Jane Smith — City Council District 3"), plus link-preview cards, so the link unfurls cleanly when you paste it into a text, a group chat, or a social post. That preview is the point of the metadata; ranking is not.

Both pages are marked so search engines do not index them, and nothing on the site enumerates them. There is no page that shows who uses Culper, the sitemap does not include campaign pages or join pages, and a visitor who does not have your link has no way to discover it. A campaign that has not shared its link has no public footprint on the platform at all.

This is a privacy feature, not an oversight. A consultant running several races, a county party organizing chairs, or a first-time candidate who has not announced yet can set up and use the product without anyone learning that they did. You decide when the campaign page goes anywhere, by deciding when to send the link.

The pages are still public in the ordinary sense: anyone who has the link can open them without signing in. Treat the link like a flyer, not a password.

The card shows exactly five things: candidate name, office sought, state and district, election date, and campaign name. For a PAC, party, or coalition, it shows the organization name and, when no office is set, labels it a political organization. That is the entire page today; there is no photo, biography, issues section, or endorsement list.

The page is live only while the campaign is active and has not been archived. It is cached and refreshed every hour, so an edit in settings shows within the hour rather than instantly. If the campaign is archived, the link returns a not-found page.

The join page is a single form under your campaign name: first name (required), last name, email, phone, a How would you like to help choice (Show my support, Volunteer, or Donate), a yard sign checkbox, and a notes box. On submit the person becomes a contact in your campaign with the source marked as the public form, and they see "You're signed up!"

The text-message opt-in is built the way TCPA requires. The checkbox is unchecked by default and disabled until a phone number is typed. Its label is the express-written-consent disclosure: agreement to receive campaign texts including via automated technology, consent not a condition of purchase, message and data rates may apply, frequency varies, reply STOP to unsubscribe or HELP for help. Only when it is checked, and only with a usable phone number, is a consent record written for your campaign; an unchecked box records nothing, and the sign-up still succeeds.

The join link works for any live campaign, active or not, because you distribute it yourself. Like the campaign page, it is not indexed.

Owners and Admins edit the fields shown on the campaign page in Settings: campaign name, candidate name, office sought, state, district, and election date. The same form holds early voting start and end, the last day to register, and the last day to request a mail ballot, which drive the election-dates widget on your dashboard rather than the public page. Settings also shows the campaign's status as a read-only badge.

The campaign type (individual candidate, PAC, political party, or coalition), jurisdiction, and office are set when the campaign is created. Campaigns are created by the Culper team on request, so the office, district, and boundaries are right from day one; campaigns start as drafts and are switched to active during setup, which is what makes the campaign page render. Archiving the campaign takes both pages down.

If your campaign does not use a section of the dashboard, such as fundraising or intel, support can hide it campaign-wide for every role. That is a dashboard setting rather than a public one, but it is part of shaping what the campaign looks like to your own team.

School board candidate, no website. Your campaign page and join link are live the week your campaign is set up. You put the campaign page link in your Facebook and Instagram bios and print the join link as a QR code on 500 push cards. Over six weeks, 40 people submit the form: 22 check the text-message box, 15 ask for a yard sign, and 9 pick Volunteer. The 22 are the seed of a compliant texting list; the 15 go to your sign crew; the 9 get a Team share link.

City council candidate with a campaign website. Your site stays the front door, but its Volunteer button points at the join link so every sign-up lands in contacts with consent captured instead of in an inbox. The campaign page link goes in the email signature and on the yard-sign order form, where the election date badge answers the question voters ask most.

Consultant with three unannounced clients. All three campaigns are set up and working: lists built, walks generated, team invited. None has shared a link, so none has a public footprint. When each candidate announces, they send their campaign page link and start handing out the join QR code on their own timeline.

Most local candidates never build a real website, and the ones who do build it late. A campaign page that is live the week you file and a join page with consent built in mean you can start collecting supporters on day one, and start texting them legally when your messaging registration clears. The local elections explainer shows how compressed that calendar is.

Privacy matters for the same reason. Announcing is a decision, and so is which tools you use. Keeping campaign pages unlisted means the platform never announces for you, and an opponent cannot learn your plans by browsing. If you are still deciding whether to run, the should-you-run guide and the state-by-state filing guides cover what has to happen before there is a campaign to share.

Clear boundaries, so nobody expects a website out of a campaign page.

• Not a website builder. No custom domain, page editor, photo, biography, issues, or endorsements. A candidate website builder is on the roadmap, not in the product.
• Not a public list. There is no page of campaigns on Culper, and campaign pages are not indexed by search engines. If you want to be found by search, that is a job for your own website.
• No donate button on the campaign page or the join page. Online donation processing is in development and not live.
• No public event list. Events marked Public carry a badge in the dashboard but are not shown on either page today.
• No embeddable sign-up widget for your own site. Link to the join page instead.
• The join page does not create accounts. Supporters become contacts; team members come through Team invites.
• The campaign page updates hourly, not instantly, after a settings change.

The two public pages feed the rest of the campaign.

• Volunteer coordination: invites and share links are how a join-page volunteer becomes a team member.
• SMS outreach and peer-to-peer texting: the join page's opt-in is documented consent for these.
• Compliance and data security: how that consent, STOP, and the global suppression list fit together.
• Yard signs and field assets: the yard sign checkbox marks the contact as wanting a sign.
• Email outreach: contacts with an email address are reachable here.
• Dashboard and reporting: the election-dates widget driven by the same settings.