Workshop Replay, Plus a Demo of the New Email Newsletter Tool

We had our best WordPress for Toastmasters workshop yet earlier this week, thanks largely to the input from guest speakers Arelene Preudhomme, Eloise Young, and Loni Huff.

Here’s a replay, with some follow up material below.

For details on the meeting minutes tool briefly mentioned in here, see this video demo. In addition, one thing that I promised to show but didn’t wind up having time for is the new tool for sending newsletters and event invitations by email. As shown in the meeting minutes demo, it can also be used to distribute minutes to club members.

The email tool is part of my RSVPMaker plugin, meaning you can use it on other websites outside of Toastmasters such as one for your small business. There is more detail, including details about advanced customization options, on the RSVPMaker blog.

Brand Compliance

The Toastmost service offers a set of WordPress themes (designs) that incorporate the colors from the brand manual and have been shared with the brand compliance team at Toastmasters International for review.

These WordPress themes provide a brand-compliant starting point, but the Toastmasters leaders who run these sites are still responsible for how they customize these sites.

Independent websites have more freedom to innovate, but with great power comes great responsibility. As part of the workshop, Loni Huff showed off a wildly different website for her Dungeons & Toast specialty site, but as she mentioned only logged in members see that version. The public website still shows off the unique character of that specialty club, while using brand manual colors and the standard logo.

One of the things she demonstrates is the power of building on a web platform that allows skilled and creative people to go beyond what I provide “out of the box.”