WordPress for Toastmasters*I’m looking for a few good communicators: specifically people with a talent for communicating technical information as simply as possible.
The WordPress for Toastmasters project, and the Toastmost.org site hosting service, aim to put the power of the world’s most popular web publishing platform at the fingertips of club and district webmasters. In addition to offering TI-branded website designs, my add-ons support agenda management and other club business processes. Much as I want to brag about it, I know this enterprise would be better if it was less of a one man show.
I’m appealing to the trainers and technical writers among you, as well as those interested in developing those skills, to contribute to an article or a video. Take time to learn the software and make it easier for others to learn.
To date, I have created most of the documentation myself. You will find it in the knowledge base section of this website. Although I put a lot of work into it, I’m arguably the worst person to document the software because I already know how it works and don’t always recognize the details that aren’t obvious to other people. Although it’s often in the process of trying to explain things, that I realize I need to make them better.
Documentation and Simplification
The best software documentation is no documentation at all, if software can be made completely self explanatory. Unfortunately, making software easy to use turns out to be one of the hardest things in computing.
WordPress is easy to use — once you get the hang of it — but also ever changing because the developers behind this open source web publishing platform are forever pursuing new goals, including improved ease of use. The very latest updates to WordPress make designing or redesigning an entire website easier than ever before, but those new “ease of use” features take a while to get used to, and they will probably be significantly better a version or two from now.
My goal is to help club leaders learn the essentials of WordPress needed to publish an attractive home page and the occasional blog, while also managing agendas and other Toastmasters specific tasks. They don’t need to master all the details professional web developers and designers care about, but they need to make the effort they invest productive for their club.
In addition to helping me explain the offering to the world, volunteers can probably give me feedback on things that are more complicated than they need to be. And we’ll work on making them better.
If you’re interested in helping, please write me at david@wp4toastmasters.com
