TOPIC:

We are debating setting up a Wordpress website. We love FTH and appreciate the features but find it not the most user friendly when we are switching officers every year.

Is FTH the only way to map email addresses? To stay in compliance with TI do rules exist around email mapping? I tried to find information on this but couldn't seem to find any.

Thank you for all of your help.

We can only talk about FTH, anything outside of FTH is entirely yours to investigate.

Not sure why you say changing officers is a problem, you just change the pull down besdte the officers names in the Member management. Have you read the documentation?
support.toastmastersclubs.org/doc/item/m...-panel#officer-roles

LMGregorakis wrote:

but find it not the most user friendly when we are switching officers every year.

Care to elaborate? I think it is important for us to hear feedback, even if it is negative. (Have to get outside of our "bubble".)

Thank you for your responses.

When I said we were switching officers each year, I meant that, a new person has to be trained on FTH every year. I will be honest and say that our group is not the most tech savvy group so finding answers easily around FTH has been challenging. Yes, I have read the documentation. I understand the documentation but I can't say the same for the next VPPR that takes over in less than a month. Transition with FTH is challenging.

I am not asking for any help outside of FTH. I completely recognize you are all volunteers and put a lot of time and energy into FTH. I thought I phrased my questions only relating to TI guidelines which I can't seem to find, rules with email mapping. If that is something you cannot speak to then I will continue to search the rules if FTH is the only platform we are allowed to use for mapping.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my post.

Hey, Lucia...

Just giving a few extra thoughts... please do provide as much feedback as you can regarding FTH. Steve really does pay attention and is very interested in making the service exceptional.

As someone who runs both FTH and WordPress websites, I think there are some things you might want to consider before changing over. While some clubs are very happy with WordPress, you do want to know what you'll be dealing with.

FTH is complex in it's own way, but that's really because it has so many options that are useful in running a Toastmasters club. WordPress is much simpler at the start, because it has pretty much NONE of those options. You will have to figure out on your own how to add them, deal with the foibles of plugins created independently by dozens of separate sources, and you may find that some of them will work better with one WordPress theme than another, so you'll probably want to test out a LOT of different themes, before finally settling down with one. Some themes will offer options that others do not, and the things you've done under one theme may vanish, once you try to switch to a different theme. (I learned this (bitterly) the hard way...)

Oh, by the way, you won't have a forum like this one to go to for support. There certainly are online discussions that might be helpful, but these will offer advice from people who don't know your exact setup, and will be merely guesses as to what your problems might be. While we can actually log into your FTH site to troubleshoot problems as a last resort, that option will no longer be there for you.

If as you say you are not too tech savvy, WordPress is ideal for a simple blog, but it might be very trying if your club is depending on it to function. That means that WordPress might be fine if it's just an online advertisement for your club, rather than a tool you're actually using to run your club. If your club will depend on it for administrative functions, you'll probably need to do a lot of learning, first.

I would recommend getting a free WordPress site to play around with, and perhaps even put links from your FTH site to the WordPress one, to add a blog to your site, for example. I would just really be cautious about trying to implement any significant subset of FTH's services in WordPress, without having the old FTH site to fall back on, if you should decide the job is bigger than you'd realized. Make sure you're really, really familiar with WordPress, and particularly the flavor of WordPress you create with your selection of theme and plugins, before making the final decision to switch over.

Yes I'm biased, as I'm an FTH ambassador, but I've also waded into both ponds and have a reasonable feel for what you'll be dealing with. Some clubs will handle it well, others, not so much. I just want your decision to be the right one for you.

Thank you Wesb.

This was extremely helpful for making a decision in regards to a website.

As for general issues we have come across:
-Formatting photos of officers and getting the bios to "look pretty"
-When officers give their bio to the VPPR to input to our website the formatting is challenging. Everyone seems to submit a different font or color or size so copy and pasting can throw everything off.
-The Toastmasters podcast section leads to what seems to be a dead link. www.dowellwebtools.com/tools/bg/Bo
Maybe that is something we are supposed to update. We focus on the basics and as you said, use it more of a landing page than a sign up and interactive website. If I could get people to use it as an interactive website, I would because I see how powerful FTH is for a meeting! Amazing!
-Pro and con, homepage is set up as a box to add a photo and text. Seems simple, especially for those who may use word. The edit box is so small. I feel like I cannot get a good idea of how it may look once changes are saved. I felt like I was constantly hitting save and seeing how it look, then going back in and making a tweak. Then repeating the same process. Maybe a preview change.
-Not easy to showcase weekly meetings or updates. We do this on facebook but it would be awesome if that could show up on our website as well. It feels like it requires more effort than it is worth to update things on a regular basis.
-I understand you are volunteers and I am so grateful for the time you have put into this. Not for the purpose of adding more to your plate but, I suggest tutorials. I know you have extensive documents explaining things but sometimes it is hard to understand what you are saying without a visual follow along. It seems like that is how most people are learning these days and I think it would empower people to navigate FTH with more confidence.

Pros:
-The google maps feature makes the location look very professional.
-Looks very professional. I have had comments from guests stating that our website looks very professional. Seamless transition between TI website and club website. You wouldn't even know they are different hosts or websites.
-Easily gives visitors to the website information about the club, officers, TI. Very easy to navigate.
-As you mentioned the support. I was nervous about writing into this forum because I don't have all of the tech lingo. Thank you for breaking things down for me and working with me to figure things out. FTH is an incredible platform but it is different that what I am familiar with so thank you for being patient with me.

Again, just a few suggestions. I really enjoy the platform and I hope people continue to realize all it is capable of.

LMGregorakis wrote:

As for general issues we have come across:
-Formatting photos of officers and getting the bios to "look pretty"

The bio text is inserted into a highly formatted page generated by the server. Thus, I really do not want to allow for much formatting there, to prevent an overly "busy" looking page. I have considered allowing for some very basic "character only" formatting in bios (like for the banner and floater text), but I have not yet committed to implementing that.

LMGregorakis wrote:

-When officers give their bio to the VPPR to input to our website the formatting is challenging. Everyone seems to submit a different font or color or size so copy and pasting can throw everything off.

What I have told others: create a simple form in MS Word or others that provides leading questions and guides people on the information needed for a good bio. I recommend limiting people to two things: general personal information about themselves (and/or career) and Toastmasters related information (what they have accomplished in Toastmasters). These two things tend to have the most promotional value in my opinion--they encourage website visitors to see that club members are just like them and they see that Toastmasters club members get real results from their membership.

LMGregorakis wrote:

-The Toastmasters podcast section leads to what seems to be a dead link. www.dowellwebtools.com/tools/bg/Bo
Maybe that is something we are supposed to update. We focus on the basics and as you said, use it more of a landing page than a sign up and interactive website. If I could get people to use it as an interactive website, I would because I see how powerful FTH is for a meeting! Amazing!

my issue to fix

LMGregorakis wrote:

-Pro and con, homepage is set up as a box to add a photo and text. Seems simple, especially for those who may use word. The edit box is so small. I feel like I cannot get a good idea of how it may look once changes are saved. I felt like I was constantly hitting save and seeing how it look, then going back in and making a tweak. Then repeating the same process. Maybe a preview change.

Click the zoom full page icon for the editor.

LMGregorakis wrote:

-Not easy to showcase weekly meetings or updates. We do this on facebook but it would be awesome if that could show up on our website as well. It feels like it requires more effort than it is worth to update things on a regular basis.

Other clubs do this. Look at other clubs websites, and use the forums to make inquiries on how to improve your website. (e.g. Evaluate our Website! section of forums)

LMGregorakis wrote:

-I understand you are volunteers and I am so grateful for the time you have put into this. Not for the purpose of adding more to your plate but, I suggest tutorials. I know you have extensive documents explaining things but sometimes it is hard to understand what you are saying without a visual follow along. It seems like that is how most people are learning these days and I think it would empower people to navigate FTH with more confidence.

We are aware of this. It is just a case of video approaches needing a lot of someone's time to produce and maintain.

LMGregorakis wrote:

Pros:
-The google maps feature makes the location look very professional.
-Looks very professional. I have had comments from guests stating that our website looks very professional. Seamless transition between TI website and club website. You wouldn't even know they are different hosts or websites.
-Easily gives visitors to the website information about the club, officers, TI. Very easy to navigate.
-As you mentioned the support. I was nervous about writing into this forum because I don't have all of the tech lingo. Thank you for breaking things down for me and working with me to figure things out. FTH is an incredible platform but it is different that what I am familiar with so thank you for being patient with me.

Again, just a few suggestions. I really enjoy the platform and I hope people continue to realize all it is capable of.

Don't worry about not being as tech-savvy. FTH is really more geared to people like you than the really "techie" people. In fact, it is really the techie people that tend to run into more issues with the system. (They expect things that the system is not really designed to support.)