My WordPress Manifesto

I'm currently looking for a new project, a new challenge, a new opportunity to put to work everything I've learned about WordPress development, support, and customization. Why am I so obsessed with WordPress?

I was motivated to articulate that after speaking with a District Trio member who was inclined to rebuild his district website on Wix or Canva or another commercial tool instead of WordPress. In a post on my personal blog, I explain why I think WordPress is better. In particular, although there's a lot to love about Canva, I think building a whole district website around it is short-sighted and will limit what you can do online in the long run.

Read: WordPress: Why I Use It, Recommend It, and Build Digital Projects Around It.

Prevent Outdated Info: the Limited Time Content Block

I hate seeing outdated information on the home page of a website -- like promotions for "upcoming" events that happened weeks or months ago. It looks unprofessional. And while Toastmasters websites are supported by volunteers, we're a professional organization that wants to present a professional image.

One tool that's available to you as a Toastmost webmaster is the Limited Time Content block, a feature of RSVPMaker. RSVPMaker events are tied to a calendar, which means they will never be shown as "upcoming" if they are in the past. But there are other circumstances where you want to post promotions or notices to your website that you don't want to show up after a certain date.

In the example below, I've used it for a notice that my Friday morning club will not meet on November 28, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, and the notice is set to expire on November 29. You can set both a start time (before which the content will not be displayed) and an end time (after which it will disappear).

You add the Limited Time Content block the same way you add any other content block, like an image, a heading, or a layout block like the Group, Columns, or row blocks.

Like the layout blocks, Limited Time Content is a container block that "wraps around" other blocks. Although I'm showing a single paragraph in the Thanksgiving example, you could place multiple paragraphs, headings, and images inside -- any content that you don't want to be displayed publicly before a certain date and/or after a given date.