TOPIC:

Some fellow TMers with time and talent created some wonderful reports for the rest of us. Enjoy!

These reports get all kinds of valuable data. For example here are some website stats from my District 58:
13 FreeToastHost 1.0 sites with unpublished FTH2 sites
13 FreeToastHost 1.0 links found (no unpub FTH2 site found)
54 FreeToastHost 2.0 links found
1 WordPress sites found
0 Easy-Speak sites found
2 Other site designs found
3 Invalid URLs found (due to all causes including timeout)
29 Total non-working sites


Get this geeky juicy info at www.marshalls.org/tmtools/#urlcheck

Ensure to checkout the section 'Even More Tools for Toastmasters!'. There are links to additional resources.

Really like this... *lots* of good stuff there.

I am intrigued by the website type report that has the following in the legend:
FTH1unpubFTH2 - Club still publishes obsolete FTH1 URL, but may have an unpublished FTH2 site - click link to check it.

I am thinking that it would not be that difficult to send a "Heads Up" email to those clubs listed there that actually do have a FTH2 website but still list an FTH1 address or other bogus address on Find A Club. Something along the lines of "Hey, thanks for putting together a club website using FreeToastHost 2. Did you know that your club's contact information on the Toastmasters International Find A Club page still lists an old or invalid website address? If you would like people interested in your club to be able to actually find your website using the Find A Club feature, here is how to correct the website address shown there." (Include directions for making the change.)

I just wonder how many clubs do not even realize there is an issue with this.

I have used this tool for the past couple of years and even though I have personally sent out emails to the clubs, area and division governors in my district, as well as the district Trio who have also sent emails to the clubs, the clubs do not update the information at TI. For some reason, club websites are really not that important to some clubs, other than the tools that they want to use.

For some reason, club websites are really not that important to some clubs, other than the tools that they want to use.

That is a real shame. In my club, when I really took on our website, we went from having one meeting guest about every 3 or 4 months to having a average of 1 or 2 guests (unexpected, spontaneous) at every meeting. It has resulted in a 25% increase in our club membership (to 25 members). The difference is very striking and even our long-time members have "gotten the point" and are totally sold on the website now.

I visited another club last night near where I work (about 1.5 hrs from where I live). It turned out to be a 50 year old club that has maybe 15 active members. I had scouted their website prior to going and determined that it was an FTH2 website in "its infancy". I mentioned my association with FreeToastHost and their website, and they just seemed uninterested. However, when I mentioned how my current club had new membership to the point where speaker slots are more scarce, they became instantly interested in how we did that. Very strange that clubs do not seem to make the connection between having a great website and expanding membership.

Steve,

For some reason, some clubs think that they have enough members already and do not need to advertise for them. I know that most of the visitors our club gets are directly from finding the website (all of our newest members are because of seeing us on the web). Now we just need to get a lot more visitors. Before my club started using FTH1, I didn't even know it club existed, and I live 2 miles from where it meets.

Steve:

I have been forwarding the D61 report to the trio for that last year. They have sent emails to the offending clubs who still have not fixed their site listings on Toastmasters.org club central.

Toastmasters International even sent out emails during the migration the those clubs who were showing a FTH1 URL. As we have seen most clubs didn't do anything, as we still get people showing up talking about where is their FTH1 website.

Now I am Division Governor and have a bunch of these FTH1unpubFTH2 and dead sites. It will be interesting to see what happens. I have already sent out the report to my 4 Area Governors to get after the clubs.

The joys of a volenteer organization.

Hi guys and thanks for the kind words. I built the club url checker to help my district with the transition from FTH1 to FTH2, and even after all that time, it still gets several uses every day. Back during the transition, I contacted every club in my district, but changes were slow Even in our tech-heavy area (Silicon Valley), there are lots of members who are intimidated by the idea of doing anything with a website.

I have heard from a few districts who got all or most clubs to convert, and they said it took a lot of time and repeated contacts.

Districts 59, 85, 24, 38, 49, 55 and 68 each have 3 or less clubs with FTH1 (or FTH1unpubFTH2) listed.
At the other end of the scale, D14 has 48 such clubs, and these districts all have 20 or more such clubs: 4, 21, 50, 70, 69, 36, 3.

Well, I noticed that for my district (52) there are 28 out of 118 clubs with link issues. I was pretty surprised and that was what got me going.

Roger,

I know that most of the visitors our club gets are directly from finding the website (all of our newest members are because of seeing us on the web).

I can *totally* relate to this. What really drove the point home to our long-time members was that I added a column called "How did you hear about us? (friend, website, etc.)" to the Guest Info section of our Attendance form (we use it instead of a guest book). A *lot* of guests wrote in Website in that column and we were able to put "2 + 2 together".

GeorgeMarshall: The report rocks! Enough said.

Very helpful! I've spotted two clubs in my own Area that have problems according to this report. They also happen to be ones with low membership - maybe that's not be a coincidence.

I recently made a small addition to the Club website checker tool:
There is now an option to show only the "problem" clubs, the ones with invalid responses (due to timeout, typo, bad domain etc) plus the ones still listing an FTH-1 domain.

I did this to make it easier to spot the clubs with website problems, since for most districts they are now a small percentage of the clubs.

Here's the URL for the tools site again:
www.marshalls.org/tmtools/#urlcheck

George