how to offer online course on wordpress website

by Kaitlin Fay 4 min read

How to Create and Sell Online Courses with WordPress (Step by Step)

  • Step 1. Setting up Your WordPress Website. There are plenty of website builders and online course platforms that you can...
  • Step 2. Install and Setup MemberPress LMS Plugin. Now that your WordPress website is ready, the next step is to install...
  • Step 3. Creating Your First Course. The course creation...

Let's take a look at how you can create an online course for free using WordPress in seven simple steps:
  1. Download and Install the LearnPress Plugin.
  2. Create a New Course.
  3. Configure the Course Settings.
  4. Add the Lessons to Your Course.
  5. Create Quizzes.
  6. Link the Lessons and Quizzes to the Course.
Dec 28, 2021

Full Answer

What is the best online WordPress course?

Best WordPress Courses . Take a quick look at Benzinga’s top picks: WordPress for Beginners – Master WordPress Quickly by Udemy ; WordPress for Beginners: Create a Website Step by Step by Udemy

How to create an online course using WordPress?

Step by step process on how to create an online course with WordPress

  1. Set up your website on WordPress. Obviously, you have to set up your WordPress website first where your prospective learners will land and grab skills from your online courses.
  2. Install WordPress LMS plugin and themes. Time to convert your WordPress website into an online course selling website. ...
  3. Improve your e-learning website appearance. ...

More items...

Where can I learn WordPress online?

  • Intermediate level
  • 1 hour
  • Specifically covers website migration
  • Taught by a WordPress Core Contributor
  • Includes problem management instruction
  • Certificate of completion

How to learn WordPress?

What you'll learn

  • Navigate around the Wordpress dashboard, know what everything does and how to use it.
  • Understand the main features of Wordpress
  • Create pages and posts, and most importantly, know the difference between the two.
  • Know how to configure Wordpress for best results
  • Understand plugins & themes and how to find/install them

Can I host online courses on WordPress?

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.

How do I add an online course to my website?

0:001:52:38How to Create an Online Course Website with WordPress - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipSo you won't need any previous. Experience i'm going to show you how to fully customize your courseMoreSo you won't need any previous. Experience i'm going to show you how to fully customize your course presentation how to build a course on your website using learndash how to include quizzes.

How do I publish a course online?

0:366:17PUBLISH YOUR ONLINE COURSE - Step-by-step - YouTubeYouTubeStart of suggested clipEnd of suggested clipRecord your lessons in this step you screen recorded your slide presentation. As you delivered yourMoreRecord your lessons in this step you screen recorded your slide presentation. As you delivered your lesson content edit your videos this step has you removing unwanted mistakes.

Is selling online courses profitable?

Are online courses profitable? Yes. They're actually one of the best business models you can adopt as a digital business because they're in demand and more and more people are willing to pay top dollar for them.

How do I create a free online course?

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...•

Which is the best online course platform?

10 Best Online Learning Platforms In 2022 To Jumpstart Your CareerSkillshare.Mindvalley.Coursera.Udemy.Brilliant.org.Edx.org.Udacity.LinkedIn Learning (Ex Lynda)More items...

Which online teaching platform is best?

List of 15 Best Online Teaching Platforms for TeachingByju's.Vedantu.Unacademy.Udemy.Skillshare.Teachable.Cuemath.Lingoda.More items...•

What is the best learning platform for online courses?

The 7 Best Online Learning Platforms of 2022Best Overall: Coursera.Best for Niche Topics: Udemy.Best for Creative Fields: Skillshare.Best for Celebrity Lessons: MasterClass.Best for STEM: EdX.Best for Career Building: Udacity.Best for Data Learning: Pluralsight.

Why Use WordPress to Sell Online Courses

WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) in the world. Not only that, more than 40% of the website over the world are built using WordPress. This was possible because of the diverse range of websites people can build using WordPress.

Step By Step Guide to Create and Sell Online Courses on WordPress

This will be a hands-on guide to creating and selling online courses. So we suggest you follow the process with us. You can either try it on your live site or localhost or even a staging site.

Bonus: Tips to Promote Your Online Course

If you have followed thus far, you already learned how to create and sell online courses on WordPress. Now we want to share some tips to promote your online courses so that it gets the exposure it deserves and be able to help the people in need of it.

Wrapping Up

Online course sites are getting popular day by day. While sites like Coursera & Udemy let you create online courses on their platform, they also charge a large fee. So we suggest you opt for a personal site that lets you sell without any commissions and build your personal brand.

Pros and Cons of 3rd Party LMS Sites Compared to WordPress

3rd party sites, such as Udemy, Skillshare, and LinkedIn Learning, make it easy and tempting to go with them instead of WordPress.

1. Picking a Course Idea (that sells)

This can vary, depending on whether you WANT your course to sell. There might be a situation where you have a specific course that you need to implement for your employees or a small group of people, and you plan on offering it for free. Or, maybe it’s included in your membership (e.g., integrated video tutorials on WordPress ).

2. Having a Domain Name

This one seems obvious, but yes, it’s part of the essentials to launching a course.

3. Set Up a WordPress Hosting Account

Considering this will be an online course, you’ll want managed WordPress hosting that’s reliable, safe, and can handle an ample amount of visitors. It’s not recommended to use shared hosting or anything that might affect your security or speed.

4. Including an eLearning Add On

We’ll be going over this more with detailed information on themes and plugins you can use for your courses. There are many good options when it comes to how your courses look visually, how your courses function, and much more.

5. Get Good Equipment

You’ll need a good computer to set up a course for WordPress. That’s a given. However, when creating the courses themselves, bring the quality of your classes up a few notches with some good equipment.

6. Marketing Your Course

Marketing is the final ingredient to ensuring your course success. We’ll get into this a lot more later in this article. Marketing is essential to getting your course out to the right audience.

What is clever course?

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.

What is WP Engine?

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.

How much is LearnDash?

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.

What is LifterLMS free?

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.

Is text only a multimedia course?

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.

Is LearnPress free?

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.

How much does it cost to set up a course on WordPress?

To get your online course set up in WordPress you'll need to buy a domain for around $10, get a web host for about $100 per year, and buy a license for an LMS plugin like LearnDash for around $150 per year.

How much does it cost to host a WordPress course?

So in total, you can get a new WordPress course set up for around $260 per year. If you wanted to host your online course on a platform like Teachable, it would cost you a minimum of $360 for the most basic plan. Most likely, you'd actually need the professional plan which costs $948 per year.

How to install LearnDash?

Installing LearnDash is just like any other WordPress plugin. Go to Plugins, and then Add New. Then simply upload the .zip folder containing your plugin and activate it. This should create a LearnDash LMS menu item in WordPress. The menu is where you'll create all of your course lessons, quizzes, and everything else.

What is a page builder?

​#N#If you don't know how to code or program, then a page builder is an extremely useful feature to have in a theme. Page builders allow you to simply drag and drop text, videos, and images to create a wonderful looking website.

How fast does a website load?

Most people expect a website to load within 3 seconds and will click away if it doesn't load within that amount of time.

What is the common mistake that new website creators make?

​A common mistake that new website creators make is to create a website that is too complicated. Resist the urge to cover your website with complicated layouts, fancy animations, and too much color. It might feel cool to experiment with all of the features at your disposal, but a simple website often performs the best.

What is WordPress made for?

WordPress is made for blogging . Using SEO (search engine optimization) to drive extra free traffic to your online course website is a strategy that you'll definitely want to use. WordPress is specifically made for blogging.

WordPress online course plugins

First, you need to find and set up WP LMS plugin which will allow you to create your online course. All you need is to choose one that suits all your needs and requirements, download it, install it to your WP platform, and configure the functionality.

WordPress online course themes

After you are all set with an LMS plugin, it is time to think about the website design. You can choose any suitable theme in the WordPress theme directory, but we recommend contacting UX and UI designers at WishDesk in order to create your own responsive theme for an online course website according to all your wishes and requests.

Entrust an online course website creation to professionals!

This was a brief overview of the essentials necessary for online course website development. However, it is always a good idea to contact specialists when it comes to web development, especially when it is a complex project like an online course website using WordPress. Leave your task here and we’ll get in touch soon!

Prepare Your Online Course Content

Since you’re here looking up how to create an online course website (with WordPress), then I assume you already know what the topic of your online course is going to be and you have the course content roughly prepared.

Add Your Course Content to LifterLMS

Before you start adding your course content to LifterLMS, it’s a good idea to take advantage of that example course you imported, and actually go through it yourself.

Set up Course Pricing and Access

With your course content ready, the next step is to decide how people are going to be able to access it and if there’s going to be any payment required to do so.

Set up a Payment Gateway

LifterLMS allows you to use multiple payment gateways on your online course website. However, most people will opt for PayPal or Stripe.

Conquer the World!

This concludes our guide on how to create an online course website with WordPress!

By Karol K

Karol K. (@iamkarolk) is a freelance blogger and writer, WordPress figure-outer, and published author of "WordPress Complete". His work has been featured all over the web on sites like: Smashing Magazine, Ahrefs.com, Optimizely.com and Adobe.com.

What is a WordPress Membership Site?

A membership site allows you to restrict access to certain content on your website in return for a fee. This could be access to premium content, infographics, case studies, cheat sheets, downloads, tutorials, or courses.

Why Create an Online Course?

Online education is a $300 billion (yes, billion with a B) industry. The pandemic played a major role in increasing the industry’s worth by forcing many coaches, trainers, and educational institutions to adapt to online teaching.

How to Create a WordPress Membership Site for Selling Courses

Now, let's run through the 10 essential steps on how to create a membership site and sell your online courses on WordPress.

Conclusion

Creating an online course is also an excellent way to generate income from your blog. With the education industry being so lucrative, why miss out on this opportunity?

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