Toastmasters Meeting Role Setup on WordPress

Note: The instructions below are out of date. See the How To page for a current listing of tutorials.

The WordPress for Toastmasters project combines the power and flexibility of WordPress with event scheduling and Toastmasters-specific functionality such as meeting role signup, meeting agenda printouts, and a member directory.

WordPress provides a terrific visual editor for composing blog entries and web pages, with the ability to insert links, images, video, and other media. What I’m showing here is a visual editor of my own design for setting up meeting roles and text for the agenda.

There are two ways to set up meeting roles and agenda text using WordPress for Toastmasters: the easy way and the hard way. The hard way is not particularly hard for the experienced webmaster, but the tool shown below is for the club officer who just wants to make some quick changes.

When you click the menu item for Edit Roles/Agenda, you are taken to a specialized editor that allows you to drag-and-drop blocks of text and role assignments. The Agenda Notes widgets give you an editor for messages to be displayed on the agenda. The Role widgets let you customize to roles and set the number of openings for roles such as speaker and evaluator. You can add or remove these blocks as needed.

When you’re first setting up your site, you will define a template with the roles and agenda messages you plan to use for a typical meeting. But you always have the flexibility to change the role/agenda setup on a meeting-by-meeting basis.

Coder’s Alternative

The other way to edit the role/agenda setup is directly in the native WordPress editor. WordPress for Toastmasters uses a series of placeholder codes (“shortcodes” in WordPress lingo) to invoke functions like displaying the “Take Role” buttons to logged in members.

The format for these is:

[toastmaster role=”Speaker” count=”3″]

(Display 3 speaker roles on the signup form and the agenda)

[agenda_note]

This text will only appear on the agenda.

[/agenda_note]

(bolding of the brackets added for emphasis).

I often make changes directly in WordPress, but I noticed other club officers weren’t comfortable working with the codes. Thus, the need for the visual, point-and-click editor.