Our workshop on working with agendas in the WordPress for Toastmasters system covered how to add, edit, and rearrange the roles that appear on your agenda as well as other elements such as “stage directions” notes. Watch it by clicking on the image below.
Agenda Workshop Replay
Thank you to everyone who attended and enriched the conversation with your questions.
See also the written documentation on how to create and edit meeting agenda documents.
Replay: May Overview Workshop
If you haven’t already seen it, the replay of a previous workshop from late May goes into more detail about using the website as a marketing tool. I also included a demo of the email newsletter tool in that blog post.
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.
The public website for Dungeons & Toast
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.”
Building on the foundation of WordPress, which is used by major publications like The New Yorker and marketing organizations like Disney, Toastmost provides clubs and districts with rich multimedia publishing tools — more ways of dramatizing the value of the Toastmasters experience. The Toastmasters-specific extensions demonstrated in this workshop allow your club to manage its agenda and take advantage of digital methods of doing business, such as a web-based membership application that offers new members the option of paying online.
“This allows us to step our game to the next level of professionalism”
Carol Prahinski, Past International Director, on the value of the WordPress-powered Toastmost club website hosting service.
In this excerpt, Carol Prahinski addresses the issue of why you should consider Toastmost over free options like Free Toast Host.
Sign up at toastmost.org to try the WordPress-powered club website service. The software is also available for free if you have the skills to set up an independent website.
The new 62toast.com is hosted on Toastmost, and adding each of the videos shown above was as easy as pasting a link from YouTube into the WordPress editor.
Additional documentation is at wp4toastmasters.com, including a complete course with short video clips on each phase of the website setup process.
If you have questions that were not addressed in the workshop, you can write to david@wp4toastmasters.com and include “District 62 workshop” in the subject line.
Other district leaders who would like me to present to their leaders, please write to david@wp4toastmasters.com and include “Toastmost speaking invitation” in the subject line.
This workshop was delivered as part of a meeting of Online Presenters Toastmasters, a club that meets online and focuses on developing skills for webinars and online meetings.
The WordPress for Toastmasters project aims to give clubs a first-class web and social media marketing platform to use when promoting their clubs, along with Toastmasters specific features such as meeting role signup. David F. Carr, the founding President of Online Presenters, is also the prime mover behind the development of the WordPress for Toastmasters software. In this educational workshop, he covers some of the essentials for using the software effectively, and answers questions from the club and guest attendees.
* This software is offered "for Toastmasters" but not is provided by or endorsed by Toastmasters International. The use of Toastmasters brand assets (with proper disclaimers) in website designs has been reviewed by the Toastmasters International brand compliance team.
WordPress for Toastmasters*
