WordPress for Toastmasters*
I just replied to a friend in Toastmasters who wrote asking about my “wordpress plugin for free toast host,” and I’m including a copy of my reply here because it articulates the essentials of what I’ve been trying to do with the WordPress for Toastmasters project. The value is so obvious to me that I haven’t always explained it as well as I should have, but I’m working on it.
Re: can you send me the info on the wordpress plugin for free toast host?
What I offer is a plugin to WordPress, as an alternative to Free Toast Host.
I just wrapped up a series of webinars, of which the most thorough (and glitch-free) session is available for replay here:
The shorter “big picture vision” video is here:
And the main website is https://www.wp4toastmasters.com/
My argument is you can do a better job of online marketing and recruiting for your club by using a standard, open source platform that’s used by lots of professional publishers and marketers — with some Toastmasters-specific features layered on top. It’s the customizations (plugins and a Toastmasters-branded theme) that I’ve put my effort into.
Free Toast Host is custom-built for Toastmasters purposes, but that’s both a strength and a weakness. The weakness is it doesn’t take advantage of the same pool of innovation that WordPress benefits from.
Also, club officers who learn WordPress in the course of their duty are learning at least a potentially transferable skill for the business world. If they learn to use Free Toast Host, that’s not knowledge they can apply in any other context.
