Using the agenda

The agenda system is designed to let you add and remove yourself from roles, provide speech information and add meeting notes

Just because it is technically possible to do this, might not mean that your club operates this way. Some clubs still prefer to have the VPED, or other officer, take care of all the role assignments. Be sure to check with your club officers on your club's policy.

 

After logging in, click on the Agenda link. This shows the next agenda, or in some cases, today's agenda.

To go to another agenda, choose the date from the pull-down menu.  You can also use the left and right arrow buttons to load the prior meeting agenda or the next meeting agenda, respectively.

Note: only agendas from the last 5 meetings are shown, by default. (depending on how the website is configured) If you want to access an earlier agenda, either click on the "List All Agendas" box, or use the club calendar to find the agenda that you want and then click on it.

 

Signing up for a role

Click on the Sign Up button on the right-hand side of the agenda. You may need to refresh the page to see the change fully.

If you've signed up as Toastmaster or Chairman, or if you are VP Ed or club President, you'll get a different view of the agenda once you've refreshed the page. See editing the agenda for additional details.

 

Removing your name from a role

Click on the [ X ] to the right of your name. You may need to refresh the page to see the changes fully.

Depending on how the website has been set up, your mentor, VP Ed or Toastmaster may automatically be notified.

 

Adding speech details

Important: The system will require that you sign up for a speaker role before you add speech details.

Choose your speech project (manual and project number) from the pull-down menu.  The pull-down menu contains a filter feature that allows you to type in a few letters to search for your speech project.  If you select a PATHWAYS project from the pull-down menu, two buttons will appear (Project Description and Evaluation Form) that will allow you to view and print the project resource PDFs for the project you selected.

Add a speech title and an introduction. The title is visible to everyone, but only the VPEd, Toastmaster, admin and President/chairman can see the introduction.

If the speech introduction box already contains text, it is likely that your club has defined guidelines for a good speech introduction or a template for you to follow. If you are uncertain how to follow your club's guidelines for a good speech introduction, consult with your club's VPEd.  The following is an example of what you might see if your club is using a speech introduction template--your club may elect not to use this or may define different text.  

After you have added your speech details, be sure to click on Update Speech Details to save them.  You can also come back later and make updates.

 

Adding and editing meeting notes

Meeting notes allows you to leave brief comments, for example, that you're unable to attend the meeting.

Remember to save/update the note after adding or editing it.

 

Meeting minutes (or other attachments)

You may see one or more links at the bottom of the agenda screen in a section entitled Meeting Minutes (or Other Attachments).  These are links to files associated with the displayed agenda or meeting that you can click to download.  The files have been uploaded to the server by the Toastmaster, VPE, or Club President.  Typically, these would be links to Meeting Minutes that would be uploaded and show up after a meeting.  However, you may also see links to other types of files before a meeting, such as special meeting flyers.

 

Emailing someone on the agenda

Click on the small envelope just to the left of "role filled by" and the person's name.

A pop-up will display that will allow you to choose to send an email via the internal email editor or your email client.  The selected email editor will open with the person's address already in the address bar. This can be useful when you need to check something with one of the participants (e.g. a speaker whom you are going to evaluate).

 

Confirming Roles and Attendance

There are two areas where you can confirm your participation in a meeting. This can make the VP Ed's and Toastmaster/Chair's job easier.

 

The first is the pull-down list near the top of the agenda, just below the row of buttons. When you make your selection, the online agenda will automatically save your setting. You can change your setting later if you need to.

If you set this to "No", anyone editing the agenda will not be able to assign you to role.

If you use a signup button to take a role, attendance will automatically be set to "Yes".

 

 

Secondly, you can confirm your assigned role by clicking on the "Confirm" button below your name (or photo).

You can't remove a role confirmation. You need to remove yourself from the role entirely.

 

The Custom pages area allows you to create and edit additional pages. You may have as many of them as you wish.

To go there, choose Custom Web Pages from the main pull-down menu.

You are shown the screen for creating a new page, with an edit window and a number of fields to fill in. To edit an existing page, select the page from the pull-down menu.

 

If you haven't created any custom pages yet, you'll see nothing in this list except "Create New Page". Just start typing in the Edit window to add content, and fill in the other details as noted below before saving your first page.

Edit window

This is a WYSIWYG editor like a word processor. Add your content here.

(If you want to create a link, see adding links to other sites.)

For more details on creating and editing pages, see adding and editing content

Web Page Tools are for backing up and restoring text, replacing and rotating images, and checking for bad links. See Backing up custom content and Adding and Editing Page Content for details.

 

Page details

Your page or link needs a few details so that it can be found on the internet. The following fields allow you to add these.

 

Web Page Title / or Link Title

Is the name that shows in the browser window bar and also in the menu listing.

 

Menu Position #

This lets you have custom pages in a different order than alphabetical. The larger the number, the further down the list the menu entry appears.

 

Relocate this Web Page's Menu Entry

This is another way to relocate the menu position of a page quickly.

 

You can choose top of the menu, or before/after a specific page. You can also reset the menu ordering to alphabetical order.

 

Web Page Name

Is the URL or address of the page (what you would type in your browser to go to the page). It will end in html

Leave this blank if you're creating a link.

 

Important:

The following page names are reserved by the system for its own use. DO NOT USE THEM.

Web Page Description

When a person searches for the page in a search engine, this description is what they'll see. Therefore, make sure that it's accurate, easy to read and interesting.

Leave this blank if you're creating a link.

 

Web Page Keywords

Individual words or brief phrases that relate to the page. This field is much less important than the Description, and some search engines ignore it altogether.

Leave this blank if you're creating a link.

 

Web Page Reference Notes

Use this area to make notes about things that the next administrator may need to know, such as where you got a picture from, how you embedded a video, and so on.

 

Page Type

This setting determines which menu your page appears in and who can access it.

There are four choices.

• Public - accessible to anyone.

• Members only - accessible to members only, but the link can be seen by anyone.

• Officer only - accessible only to officers and the link is visible (in the Members Only menu) only to a logged-in officer.

• Unlisted access - the link doesn't appear in any menu. Note that it doesn't mean non-accessible. If someone knows or guesses the link, they can still access the page.
  
  In other words, it is NOT secure.

Page type can be changed at any time.

 

Appearance

To access this, click on the Appearance tab near the top of the frame.

Here you can change the background colour of the page. See Appearance for details of how to do this.

 

How to retrieve content from Google cache

(Also works with Bing cache)

If you've deleted a page, or overwritten its content, and don't have a backup, you may still be able to get the content back, especially if you've only just made the error.

When Google crawls the internet looking for content to index, it takes snapshots of pages which it stores on its servers. These show what the pages were like on the date of Google's visit.

To access this snapshot of your page, enter the page's name in the Google search box.

You can do this in any browser, not just Google Chrome.

Now look for the page's entry in the search results.

 

Just to the right of the name is a line of three dots (arrowed).

Click on that. You will get a popup screen with a button labelled "Cached" at the bottom right-hand corner.

 

Click on the word "Cached" and you'll get a copy of your page. The header at the top gives the date when the page was cached. With luck, it has the content that you want to recover.

 

 

If it's there, you can copy it and add it back into your page.

 

Select the text and copy.

Open the admin console of your site, choose the page you want to recover and paste the text in.

You may need to insert the images again, but these should still be on the server.

Save, and breathe a sigh of relief.

 

Other Available Caches and Archives

If you cannot recover your content from Google Cache, you may still be able to recover it elsewhere.

Bing also caches web pages as it crawls and indexes websites.  

Lastly, there is the independent, non-profit Internet Archive that maintains past web pages for every website that are accessible through their "Wayback Machine" website, https://archive.org/web/.

 

Remember that a backup is still the best way of making sure you don't lose your page content.

 

1: If Necessary, Request Your FreeToastHost 3 Website

• Visit http://www.toastmastersclubs.org/welcome
• Follow the instructions on the homepage to request your website.
• Once confirmed, you will receive an e-mail with the details of your new website.

 

Unchartered club

If your club hasn't chartered yet, you may still be able to get a FreeToastHost website. The club must have filed the Application to Organize, PAID the Charter Fee, and received a Club Number.

Please follow the procedure for not yet chartered clubs. Use the "please click here" link (arrowed in the diagram above) just above the Club Number field near the top of the form.

 

If your site already exists and you have the login details, you can proceed to the next step.

If your site administrator is unknown, has left the club or is being uncooperative, you can apply for a change of administrator.

The new login details get sent to the email address showing on the publicly-accessible Find-a-Club page on the Toastmasters International website (the FreeToastHost system has NO access to TI's database). Therefore, make sure that those details are up to date. See this page for information on how to do this.

Important:

There is only one official administrator and password. Your club can choose to share that password with more than one person. There is also no requirement for the administrator to be a member of the club.

 

2: Login To Your FreeToastHost 2 Website

• Once you receive your welcome e-mail, or if you already have these details, you can login by clicking the "login as site admin" button (the lower button in the screenshot) in the "Logins" left menu section. (This is just below the Main Menu section.)

• Enter your club number and temporary password as listed in your welcome e-mail, or as given to you by the previous administrator.

 

3: Launch the Admin Console To Setup Your Site

• Once you are logged in, the links in the "Logins" menu will change to show that you are logged in, and show the button to launch the admin console. Click the "launch admin console" button.

 

4: Using the Admin Console

The administration area is divided into several sections, which you can access from the pull-down menu.

 

Each section is further divided into smaller areas. Click on the tab near the top of the window to go to any one of them.

When you first open the admin console, it displays the Website Settings section and the Basic Settings tab. This section allows you to define important details about your club site.

 

If you are setting up a new site, not all of these need to be done immediately. Some can be left until later. Others are completely optional. See the Quick Start Page for an outline of important settings.

Important:

Only ONE administrator can be logged in at any time. If a second person logs in, the original one will be logged out. If you share the admin password with anyone else, make sure that you coordinate your access times so as not to cause problems.

This is a good reason for not sharing the admin password indiscriminately.

 

5: Activating your site?

This isn't necessary. Your site is already active and visible to the public from the moment that it's approved.