Hosting Your Own WordPress for Toastmasters Website

If your Toastmasters club has money in its budget for hosting, or you can get space on a web server donated, you can replicate all the functions showcased here on your own WordPress-powered website and use your own web domain. (That is, instead of an address like myclub.toastmost.org, you can use www.myclub.org).

You can purchase relatively inexpensive WordPress hosting from Siteground, the same hosting service this website uses, at this referral link.

The free RSVPMaker and RSVPMaker for Toastmasters plugins are available in the wordpress.org repository. So is the Lectern theme, which makes it easy to add Toastmasters-approved branding with all the required legal disclaimers for use of the logo.

If you install RSVPMaker for Toastmasters first, a series of prompts will guide you through installing and activating the other required and recommended software and setting up your home page and meetings schedule. The process is shown in this video.

Given a properly configured WordPress site, you should be able to install all the required software through the administrator’s dashboard. Here is a listing of the other plugins used on toastmost.org.

Note that my plugins and themes are not available if you are using a free account on WordPress.com (if you’re confused about the difference, see this article). The toastmost.org domain affiliated with WordPress for Toastmasters is meant to provide an equivalent to WordPress.com hosting with the Toastmasters plugins and theme already installed.

Lectern Theme

A WordPress theme is a set of WordPress templates that establish the design of a website, including details like fonts and color schemes.

Lectern lets you choose between several Toastmasters-branded website banners approved by Toastmasters International and automatically adds the required legal disclaimers at the bottom of the page.

Lectern is also designed to adapt its page format and menu display when viewed on a phone or other mobile device.