Get a Toastmasters Club Website in Minutes, Powered by WordPress

You can now create a Toastmasters club website on Toastmost.org, make basic customizations to your meeting agenda, invite others to help you evaluate the software, and start sharpening your marketing message — all within minutes. You can even incorporate features to help you organize online meetings and meetings that include online participation.

Because WordPress for Toastmasters is built on a bundle of products that all have different configuration options — a calendar plugin and my Toastmasters customizations, as well as the underlying site editing and publishing software — club leaders have been telling me they’re overwhelmed at first. The new setup wizard consolidates a lot of the choices you need to make up front, such as how many speakers you have at a typical meeting and whether to invite online guest registration. That becomes a two-step process, followed by pointers on next steps.

Although the tutorial focuses on the Toastmost.org website hosting service, the new setup wizard is also included in the free software version. You are welcome to use Toastmost.org for testing, even if you plan to host your website independently.

I am still looking for help making the documentation better, but meanwhile this is my latest effort to make the software itself easier to learn. Feedback? Write to david@wp4toastmasters.com

Where to Find These Functions Through the Menus

Part of the point of the setup wizard is to prevent new users from having to hunt through the WordPress menus to find different settings. Although you can return to the wizard after initial site setup, once you’re more comfortable with your website you will want to know where the different settings can be found.

Don’t feel like you have to master all these details on day one.

Set New Password

The Set New Password button appears on the Profile screen. For administrators, this is a submenu under Users. Other users will see Profile as a top-level menu.

Toastmasters Settings

The officer’s listing and other Toastmasters-specific options can be accessed from the Toastmasters screen under Settings.

RSVPMaker Settings

The WordPress for Toastmasters system uses the RSVPMaker plugin for WordPress to manage events and event registration. Many options such as whether to display the timezone on events can be set here. RSVPMaker can also be configured to collect money for events using PayPal or Stripe (the Stripe integration can also used by the Toastmasters extension for dues collection).

Event Templates

Your meeting templates and any other event templates you may have created can be accessed through this screen under RSVP Events.

Event Setup

Clicking either Add New or Event Setup under RSVP Events will bring you to this screen. After entering the date and time of your event, as well as basic settings like whether to collect RSVPs (registrations), you will compose the content of your event post in the WordPress editor.

This is how you would create an event that is not a regular Toastmasters meeting, for example an open house, party, or special workshop that your club is hosting.

Events Listing

All events created so far are shown under the main menu for RSVP Events. An edit link appears beneath each individual event.

Pages Listing

The pages of your site are listed under the Pages menu. A similar Posts menu lists all blog posts. Use pages for evergreen content and posts for newsier content, like celebrating a club member’s win at a recent contest.

Edit Links on the Front End

When you are logged in with sufficient editing rights, you will see an Edit Page, Edit Post, or Edit RSVP Event on the black menu bar that appears at the top of the screen.

In the case of events created with RSVPMaker, you will also see many options for the configuration of events and related documents, such as registration forms and confirmation messages.

If an event is based on a template — as meeting events typically are — clicking on Edit Template is one way of navigating to the template, making changes, and then updating all events currently on your calendar.