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By Jane Atkinson
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Global Settings
These are for setting and configuring notifications.
Settings for Dated Agenda Drop-down
You can choose to include the time as well as the date in the "View Another Agenda" drop-down. This could be useful for clubs with variable meeting times.
You can also select the number of past agendas that will show in this drop-down. Clubs meeting weekly may wish to display a larger number than those that meet less frequently.
Enable Role Confirmations
Checking this box allows Confirm links to be set up in the agenda.
Set the confirmation expiry time to something that makes sense for your club. Some like to have a role re-confirmed if it was originally confirmed a long time ahead of the meeting. If you don't want them to expire at all, set the number of days to something like 999.
Notification when a member takes, drops or confirms a role
If a member takes a role, confirms one or drops one, other members or officers can automatically be notified. This can help avoid problems caused by a member making changes of this kind without telling anyone.
You may choose one or more of
President
VP Ed
Club Secretary
Toastmaster of meeting
Table Topics masters
Member's mentor(s)
General evaluator
Click on the relevant box(es) in the multi-choice menu.
NB If a member signs up for a role more than 2 meetings in advance (using the above example), no notification messages will be sent. You can change the number in "next __ meetings" to suit your club. Any of the above settings can be changed at any time.
Introduction Template
You can enter some text here to act as a guide to members for creating a good introduction. It will be inserted into the Introduction box as a placeholder text. Members can then edit it as they wish.
Role / Agenda item synonyms
If you have a lot of agendas going back a few years, the names of some of the roles may have changed over time. E.g. what was originally called "Toastmaster of the Day" may now just be called "Toastmaster". This will affect the accuracy of role reports.
In this box you can define the role names that should be considered to be equivalents. The first item in the list will be the one that appears in the role reports.
An example: Toastmaster=Toastmaster of the Day=Chair
All of those roles will be consolidated in the report, under the title of "Toastmaster"
Agenda Locked to Members
This is not strictly speaking something that an admin can set. It is activated automatically by the site a set time after the meeting. However, it's included here because sometimes there are problems with the agenda locking too soon.
If you are finding that the agenda is locked to members before the meeting, check the timezone setting on your site. It should be set to your local timezone. (See Basic Settings - Club Time zone
Default Meeting Description
The default meeting description (or agenda header) is automatically added to a new agenda every time one is created.
This is a word-processor-like window for editing content, as use, for example, when creating and editing custom pages. For further information, see Adding and editing content.
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Backing up text
You've put a lot of work into your custom webpages. You don't want to lose them on account of a software glitch, or perhaps another admin (or even you) running into finger trouble.
You can quite easily back them up so that you can replace them quickly if trouble strikes:
- Open the admin panel. Choose the page you wish to back up.
- If it is not the home page or the meeting info/directions page, go to Custom Web Pages (use the pull-down menu at the top of the panel).
- Click on the Web Page Tools pull-down menu just above the page editor window.
- Select "Save contents to file".
- The backup will be saved to your browser's downloads folder.
That's all!
To restore page content:
- Go to the page in question.
- Select "Load contents from file"
- Choose the appropriate file from your computer.
Make sure that you backup regularly. Keep your backup files in a safe place.
Backing up pictures and other files
Make sure that you keep at least one copy of these in a safe place. This could be on your own computer or another online storage facility. You never know when you may need them.
Backup your membership lists
Yes, membership details are another item that can sometimes get changed accidentally. If you keep an up-to-date copy on your own computer, it's much easier to put things back to how they should be.
See Membership tools in Membership management for an easy way to do this.
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NOTE: The following features are optional and can be enabled later.
Website hit counter
This is a very simple hit counter that records unique IP addresses of visitors. That means that if someone with the same IP address visits several times, only the first visit is counted. Many companies will show only one IP address to the world, meaning that all employees will look as though they're the same person. Therefore, it's not recommended to use this counter for corporate clubs.
To enable the counter, click on the check box. You can also select the colour for the counter display. (It appears at the bottom of the home page, just above the Toastmasters disclaimer text.)
To reset and start counting again from zero, check the Reset box and save.
The server will retain hit count data for a maximum of 365 days (1 year). You can adjust this retention time to focus on whether you are seeing more hits in the past few months, for example. If you are trying to increase the number of visitors to your website, focusing on the past few months of hit data may be more helpful than setting a lot of retention time for hit data.
This hit counter is extremely basic. If you need more detailed tracking, use one or more of the methods below.
Bing Webmaster Tools
To obtain search statistics based on the Bing (& Yahoo!) search engine, use Bing Webmaster Tools. While you may not be familiar with Bing's search engine, Yahoo!'s web search function also uses Bing, so if you are interested in search statistics for your website based on Yahoo! searches, you also need to use Bing Webmaster Tools for that. To get these search statistics, you need to register your site at http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster. Do this using a club account and not a personal one. Otherwise, the information is lost when the owner of the personal account leaves the club.
Once you register your site with Bing Webmaster Tools, you will be asked to authorize/verify your site. Do this using the meta tag option. Copy and paste the entire meta tag into the field in the Website Settings.
For more information about Bing Webmaster Tools, see http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster.
Google Webmaster Tools
To obtain search statistics based on Google's search engine, use Google Webmaster Tools. To use Google Webmaster Tools you need to register your site at http://www.google.com/webmasters/ Do this using a club account and not a personal one. Otherwise, the information is lost when the owner of the personal account leaves the club.
Once you register your site with Google Webmaster Tools, you will be asked to authorize/verify your site. Do this using the meta tag option (click on the "Alternate Methods" tab). Copy and paste the entire meta tag into the field in the Website Settings.
For more information about Google Webmaster Tools, see https://support.google.com/webmasters/
Google Analytics
Google Analytics can help you understand which web pages in your website are getting the most actual use. You can use Google Analytics to obtain very detailed website statistics.
The basic instructions for setting up Google Analytics are located at https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008080?hl=en. Essentially, you will need to set up an account with Google Analytics and then request the "tracking code" from the Google Analytics website. The tracking code is just a piece of customized JavaScript that you copy & paste into the Google Analytics Script Code field. Once you have pasted this code into this field and clicked the Save button, this script code communicates with the Google Analytics system on each web page access to tell Google Analytics which web pages from your site are actually being viewed.
You need to paste the entire code into the Google Analytics Script Code field. Don't leave off the < or > signs at the beginning and end of the code. See https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/ for an example of what this code looks like. It is not important that you understand the code, only that you copy and paste the entire code into the Google Analytics Script Code field.
NOTE: Do not be concerned about where to insert the script code in your website's underlying HTML code--the FreeToastHost system handles that for you.
Important:
Remember to click on the Save button before moving on to other sections of the admin panel.
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Define your administrator
These settings are especially important if this is a new site or you've just changed administrators. You want any password reset requests and other admin communications to go to the right person.
- Click on the "Administrator Info" tab.
- Go through the options and customize the settings.
- The administrator's name should be up to date. Enter ONE person's name only.
- Administrator's email: make sure that this is a working email address. Don't use one that is tied to your club website, or there could be problems contacting that person.
- Password: when changing the password, enter it twice, once in each field.
- When you are done, click the "Save" button at the bottom of the admin console window. This will take you back to the main screen, the Club Website Settings.
Your administrator does not have to be a member of your club.
Email notifications
Check the box to send notifications about member password resets to the admin email address. This allows the administrator to be aware if anyone is having difficulty logging in and might benefit from a little help.
The second box allows the administrator to be sent notifications if there is a login from an unrecognised device or IP address. It can be disabled if there is too much email as a result of this, but please note that you (the admin) assumes any additional risks as a result.
Website Admin login messages
These are mostly used by the FreeToastHost team to send out messages to all admins. They are mainly about new features, though occasionally other topics appear.
They can also be used to leave a reminder to yourself, or to other officers who may have admin access to the website. The system does NOT send emails.
You see the messages (if any) when you log in as admin. You can then either leave them there or delete them as necessary.
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This area allows you to delegate access to certain areas of the website, without having to give out the admin password.
For example, you may wish to have the VP PR take care of updating custom pages and for VP Membership to be able to add new names to the membership list.
For each of the website areas that this feature supports, up to three officers may have access, in addition to the admin, who always has access.
To set access, click on the bar to the right of the menu item. Then check up to three boxes to select the officers.
If you want to remove all officers at once and make the area admin access only, click on the item at the top of the drop-down list.
Remember to SAVE when you have finished.
Important: Agenda Settings & Templates refers to the overall settings that affect how future agendas will look. Access to current agendas is a separate setting.
You can allow up to three officers to create new agendas and edit current ones, in addition to the site admin.
The Toastmaster of the current meeting, or other designated role-holder, has editing rights but cannot create new agendas.
Delegating Website Settings will not allow the officer(s) in question to access this Access Settings tab or the Administrator Info tab. These remain admin-only areas.
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