How to Create an Online Course with WordPress: A Step-by-Step Guide
Fortunately, WordPress makes it easy to set up an online course to share your knowledge and expertise with the world. There are a variety of themes and plugins available, designed to provide users with the ability to create and provide courses on their WordPress website.
There are quite a few WordPress online course plugins that you can choose from. However, the three most popular options include: LifterLMS, LearnDash, and WP Courseware. Each of the three plugins is feature-rich, easy-to-use, and at the same time, reasonably priced.
For example, WP101 stays true to their mission by using WordPress to offer their training courses geared at WordPress beginners: Their introductory course on all the WordPress basics is free. Or you can checkout our full list of WordPress Courses to see more examples.
There are many online course platforms that you can use to build and sell courses. This includes Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Udemy, etc. You can use any of them alongside your WordPress website.
Basic Steps To Create an Educational WebsiteFind the appropriate domain name for your educational website.Register the domain name and get a hosting plan.Install WordPress.Install a nice, attractive, and responsive educational WordPress theme for your website.Customize the theme to create a desirable look and feel.More items...•
How to Build an eLearning WebsiteCreate an Online Presence and Buy a Domain. Before you start working on your platform, you need a name. ... Setup Your eLearning Website. ... Create Your Online Courses. ... Create Quizzes. ... Monetize and Integrate WooCommerce.
What's more, creating an LMS is simple as long as you have a WordPress site and MemberPress. You'll just need to: Install and set up the MemberPress plugin on your WordPress site. Install the MemberPress Courses Add-on.
Selling Video Tutorials With SelzSet up a free account on Selz. ... Sign in to your account and complete your payment details in the main dashboard. ... Click on the “Sell an Item” button and select “Digital Item” to set up your video tutorial.In the product set up area, you can to upload the video tutorial to your account.More items...•
How to create an online course for freeThinkific: Software to create an online course for free. ... Canva: Free and low-cost design tool. ... Beaver Builder: affordable WordPress page builder. ... Camtasia: Cheap software for editing online course videos, with a free trial. ... Vimeo: Free video hosting.More items...•
LMS is another free WordPress LMS plugin on our list. It also offers a premium version to add extra features to your site.
Ease Of Use The ease of use of the LMS platform is one of the most important considerations while selecting the learning management platform you are working on. In this respect, WordPress offers unlimited flexibility in designing and managing the website.
0:222:24:59How to Create an Online Course, LMS, Educational Website ... - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipOnline classes in design business technology and more categories. And the great thing is that thereMoreOnline classes in design business technology and more categories. And the great thing is that there are many classes on wordpress. And wordpress. Related. Thing for example if you go to Skillshare.
In your cPanel, locate WordPress under AutoInstallers and click on that. Now, click on the Install button and select Quick option. Choose your domain, create a username & password, enter your email address and then click on the Install button at the bottom.
While there are many shared hosting options in the market, the one that I recommend is SiteGround . SiteGround is a premium shared hosting provider that offers fast speed, free SSL certificates, daily backup and great technical support.
If you want to just add a video in your lesson, simply copy the URL of the video hosted on Youtube, Vimeo or Wistia and paste it. If you want to add text or some other content types to your lesson, click on the WordPress icon and you can then add further content to it using the WordPress editor.
You can do that by going to Engagements -> Certificates and clicking on the Add Certificate button. This will open the WordPress editor where you can design and publish your certificate.
Click on Add Access Plan and then add a plan title, price, payment type and define access expiration. Click on Save Access Plans button and the pricing plan will be added to the course. With LifterLMS, you can add more than one pricing plan to your course.
Also, LifterLMS has in-built membership site capability that allows you to create a membership site without requiring to use an external plugin. LifterLMS’s core plugin is free to use but you’ll need to purchase their premium add-ons in order to add e-commerce capability and integrate with other marketing tools.
With LifterLMS, you can add more than one pricing plan to your course. For example, you can have a one-time payment option as well as a monthly subscription for your course. If you scroll down even further, you will see Instructors where you can add a new instructor to your course.
WP Engine is an industry leader in managed WordPress hosting. Bluehost’s regular hosting is a cheaper option from $2.95 per month. Even though the promo price is for their shared plan Bluehost has a quick install option for WordPress that helps you get WordPress ready in minutes.
Clever Course is a premium LMS WordPress theme available. Designed to help you create and sell both online and onsite courses, it includes a full range of features in a self-contained package.
LearnDash is a feature packed, premium LMS (starting at $199 for a single site), which actually has industry standard LMS integrations, such as the Tin Can API. If you need true LMS integration, this is an obvious choice.
LifterLMS (Free) LifterLMS is a new addition to the online course space. It’s a free plugin, but the premium version ($99 per year) offers additional support, added graphics, and premium themes. Premium extensions further extend the functionality.
An text-only course can be treated very differently to a multimedia course. You need to think through the types of content you want your course to include (e.g. text, video, or quizzes). Course restrictions. A free course may be considerably easier to set up than one requiring complicated membership rules.
A comprehensive WordPress Learning Management System (LMS) plugin, LearnPress is a free option for your online courses. Several free add-ons are available to extend the functionality, as well as some premium ones (starting at $19.99) to go even further.
WordPress is a powerful platform with the flexibility and functionality you need to create online courses. Creating an online course is a big undertaking, whether you have experience teaching in person or online. Unless you’re a developer, you might be wondering how to set your course up so that it is both professional and functional.
For online courses, WordPress.org continues to give the ultimate flexibility and stability. This is because WordPress.org offers maximum flexibility for selecting and installing themes, page builders, and plugins. Note: WordPress.com by Automattic states plainly that you can use plugins at the higher paid tiers.
WordPress.org Software. Fun fact: there are two ways to utilize the WordPress platform: WordPress.org, which is a free, open-source tool that you can install on your hosting account. WordPress.com, which is a paid tool (although it does have a limited free plan) that is hosted and maintained by Automattic.
If you are planning on building an online training course with restricted access, you’ll need a plugin that’s developed specifically for this purpose. To charge for your online course, you’ll need a WordPress plugin to serve as your shopping cart, checkout forms, and payment processor.
As we mentioned before, creating an online course is a great way to monetize your blog.
You might be wondering, how do I create an online course for my website? Doesn’t that take a lot of work?
Before you actually start building your online course, you need to do some planning—starting with picking the perfect course topic.
Courses for Membership Add On is a free Add On for the Paid Memberships Pro plugin. It serves as a user-friendly LMS for WordPress.
You can also use the Courses for Membership Add On with other online learning management systems. The Add On will protect your LifterLMS or LearnDash courses and provide access to paid subscribers only.
Having discussed both Courses for Membership Add On and LMS for WordPress, you would be wondering about the better option for you.
You can easily create your course on your membership website with Courses for Memberships Add On .
This is an online course plugin where you can set up a regular or a video course as well. You can select if you want to host your videos on YouTube, Vistia or Vimeo.
Now I am going to show you how easy it is to build a course with the Thrive Apprentice WordPress course plugin.
We have used Thrive Apprentice to set the course up. However, this plugin doesn’t itself have a feature to sell your course and doesn’t include the membership registration, etc. functions of your site. To do that, you will need a membership plugin.
You can easily create a purchasing process for your courses if you create a link between Thrive Apprentice and SendOwl and this is their officially recommended solution.
The above is really neat, however, I was looking for a solution that doesn’t require a monthly fee.
If you want to see how an actual WordPress online course looks like, you can check out the demo course I built with the Thrive Apprentice plugin. (I will be releasing my actual course soon.)