How to Launch an E-learning Website on WordPress

Growth in the e-learning industry has risen 900% since 2000, and experts predict that the global e-learning market will reach $1 Trillion by 2028.

If you are keen to launch an e-learning business, now is a good time. Plus, with WordPress setting up your website is straightforward.

Why WordPress for e-learning?

Nowadays, WordPress is an all-in-one service that can be used for building a high-quality website for any purpose. However, it’s considered a CMS (Content Manager System) that can easily be transformed into LMS (Learning Management System). All you have to do is to choose the right tool for that.

Top 6 Popular WordPress LMS Plugins

There are many LMS plugins for WordPress, so in this blog article are six WordPress Plugins worth consideration for your new business.

LearnPress

Today LearnPress is found as the best free LMS plugin. It’s a perfect choice for online classrooms. There is a pack of the premium, but still accessible, add-ons applied; use them for creating lessons, quizzes, and events. Yet, it doesn’t support such features as assigning homework, certificates, and enrollments.

LearnDash

By choosing LearnDash, you will get a wide range of valuable options such as quizzes, private lessons, scheduled content, certifications, enrollments, user rewards, selling courses, etc. A weak point of the plugin is the integrated themes – they can be much better. Thanks to the other robust features, the plugin remains in the top plugins for LMS.  For a one-site license, expect to pay $159/year.

EduPro

EduPro is a plugin designed and used for schools, colleges, and universities, and it’s perfect for creating courses online. The package of the plugin includes LearnDash and WooCommerce. Besides that, you will get the following:

• Drag-and-Drop Page Builder Tool
• Creative Customization Options
• BuddyPress and bbPress plugins
• Event Management
• Supported MemberPress and Paid Memberships Pro

Sensei

Sensi is a popular e-learning plugin with seamless integration with a WordPress theme. Here you will get access to a wide range of valuable and worthy features, and it’s often compared to LearnDash. Sensei is preferred for its quality of customizing quiz question types.

LifterLMS

A variety of add-ons like scheduled content, custom course builder, quizzes, homework, etc., will be at your disposal, in case the LifterLMS plugin is your choice. Besides that, the plugin supports multiple types of subscriptions and payment systems. Moreover, it enables such features as bundle lessons, analytics, progress, and management.  You can start with this plugin for free and there are also paid plans too.

WP Courseware

WP Courseware is the most popular LMS plugin for WordPress.  It helps that it was the first released and it’s had time to get it right.  WP Courseware was available from 2012, so it’s had over a decade to add a remarkable 271 features.  This is not a free plugin you will need to budget for around $129/year.

Guide: Build an E-learning Website on WordPress

When you choose the right plugin, it’s time to mastermind your online courses. Don’t know where to start? Here we are with our step-by-step guide that will help you succeed in the e-learning market.

Identify your goals and audience.

Of course, if you’ve reached this part of the article, you will likely know the topics and the niche you will teach. Anyway, you’re to decide beforehand. It’s better to choose where you can teach people many skills you are good at. Also, you should ask yourself:
What challenge/problem is the course going to overcome/help with?

What outcomes are expected?

After that, you must define whether it is a free or paid online course. That is crucial for the design and for a plugin to select. Combine both approaches offering a part of the content for free and another one to hide and provide for a determined price. That will drive the conversion. The next step you’re to do is to learn your audience and their needs to offer only relevant and valuable information/content and not to make the courses too easy or too difficult.

Plan out the structure for your e-learning website.

As soon as you set a goal and learn the audience, plan out the structure of your LMS website. What pages, lessons, classes, quizzes, menu, etc., you will include. The primary e-learning site can be:

• Homepage
• List of courses and lessons
• Page “About Us”
• Student testimonials and forums
• Actual course pages

The main rule is to make your website intuitive, user-friendly, easy to navigate, and secure from cyber-attacks. You must create theial sections and contain helpful info about you and what you offer. Remember: the more complex the e-learning website is, the harder it’ll be for you to build.

Choose a WordPress Plugin and Theme

Theme

Once you’ve completed all the previous issues, choose a plugin and a theme. Select a plugin accurately because the range of features you access depends on it. The fastest way is to select pieces already integrated into the plugin. Thus, choosing the plugin, pay attention to the articles offered. That will reduce your time and costs. Among the popular articles for LMS websites are:

• Course Builder
• Education WP
• eLearning WP
• Academy;
• Education Pack

Choose the one with all the tools and features you need and meet your demands.

Create your first course and add lessons.

When the goal, theme, plugins, and design are chosen, create your first course and add lessons. We advise you to start with a prototype first to test and ensure that everything looks and works the way you want. It’s bound to save you time and resources.

Creating a course and adding lessons to it depends on the plugin. However, the following steps are standard:

• Structure your course
• Write the course page, description, title
• Add lessons/quizzes and their content in the needed order

Equip a system with dynamic assignments

You can reduce administration time and costs by over 90% using dynamic assignments. That’s all because equipping a course with active terms allows you to collect and grade assignments in one centralized location.

Thanks to the tool, your students can attach their homework, exams and other files for you to review. What’s more, you can use it to provide your students with extra lessons materials. That will ease your work with reports too. No search for who, where and what; all needed info will be in one place.

Provide certificates on course completion.

You’d provide your students with a certificate of completion. Though such a certificate can’t be used for formal accreditation because the online courses are not accredited institutions, the students will be able to share it with co-workers, friends, relatives, and potential employers. That’s an excellent way to promote your online courses.

A course completion certificate means that your student attended all the classes, did all homework tasks, and passed all the exams. Providing such a document, you will add the element of gamification. That is an additional motivation and aim for your students to go through a course successfully.

Bottom line

Because e-learning gains popularity daily, it’s a great idea to set up online courses and monetize on the shift. Having read the article, you see everything is much easier than you may have realised. Especially if you choose WordPress for the purpose. All you need is to think about the goal of the LMS solution, and audience and plan out a structure. The rest and probably the most challenging part, is to select the right plugin for your future site that will meet your unique needs.