WordPress LMS Plugins Are Getting Popular
Until recently there was very little choice available to coaches, consultants, speakers and trainers who wanted to teach and sell courses online. There were a a couple of big players with proprietary software that didn’t run on WordPress, was near impossible to use and sucked up hours of your time.
Think “Rhymes with Doodle” 🙂
Enter WordPress LMS Plugins…
The WordPress community is always ready to fulfill a need and entrepreneurial WordPress developers like the crew at LearnDash have made elearning drop dead easy, and inexpensive. We use it here on this site along with 4 other e-Learning membership sites powered by WordPress and the LearnDash plugin.
They all allow us to sell, host, deliver, test, certify, track, and manage learning environments that both students and content creators love.
Recently Justin Ferriman at Learndash posted an article about 3 different approaches to picking a LMS. http://www.learndash.com/choosing-an-lms/
Justin points out that while WordPress is an option it’s not the only option.
Question #1: Software-as-a-Services or Self Hosted?
This is the most important determining factor that you should decide upon prior to your search. Does your organization want to pay monthly for a third party to host and manage the LMS, or do you prefer to have complete control of it on your own hosting/servers?
Deciding this up-front will narrow your search dramatically, and potentially cut your options by 50%. There are inherent benefits to both, so make sure you do proper research on these as well.
Question #2: ELearning, Live Training, or Both?
Some solutions are tailored towards online course management, delivery, and tracking while others are more geared for live training events. In some cases, there are LMS options out there that can do both quite well (which often comes with a larger price tag).
If your main objective is a robust online training program, then you can bypass the options that boast a ton of live event management features.
Question #3: Integrate with Existing Systems or Start Fresh?
This one is important. There are learning management options that integrate easily with other platforms, while others are standalone solutions.
For example, if you are selling courses and already using Authorize.net as the payment gateway, you should choose an LMS that can also integrate with Authorize.net. This will decrease the number of systems you rely upon to make your LMS function, and inherently align your LMS selection to your original organization goals.
On the other hand, if you are starting from scratch and don’t have any systems in place, then such integration will not carry as much weight in your decision.
So if you want to sell your courses online and are considering WordPress and Learndash LMS as your platform of choice… take the time to answer these 3 questions first!
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