If you are a coach, a leader, a trainer, or a teacher and planning to create an e-learning website to sell courses online, it is worth to consider the fact-
How do people actually learn?
When you dig into deep, you’ll found that in most cases, your potential learners are not completely isolated from other people. They belong to a society where they interact and learn from each other. Creating an e-learning website is not just about preparing online learning material. It’s more than that.
Here, what you are missing in online education is the concept of social learning that gives the best learning experience to the learners.
And, in this blog, you’ll gain exposure to why do you need to build an e-learning social community and the step-by-step process on how to create an e-learning social community website.
Importance Of E-learning Social Community Website
The concept of social e-learning defines that online education should not just be locked down into online courses. Rather, there is a need to bring more human interaction and active involvement to cope up with the situation of isolation.
The following points clearly depict why a social e-learning environment is a necessary component in online education:
- To interact with each other
- To discuss their queries
- To share their achievements
- To facilitate collaborative studying
- To make learning more entertaining and engaging
- To grab the collective attention of students through group discussion
- To motivate students by making their actions recognized publicly
And, don’t forget to check out these social learning strategies you should try on your e-learning website.
Let’s dive in how to create an e-learning social community website:
Step 1: Decide Whether You Need A Regular Website Or A Ready Made E-Learning Solution
Before selling your courses online, you should first sit back and decide whether you are comfortable with creating your customized e-learning website or would like to go for a ready-made e-learning solution.
Selling Courses Through Ready-Made E-learning Solutions
If you go with an e-learning solution, you will get all the tools that are needed to sell your online courses. Common features that you might get are course management functionality, marketing, and promotion tools, payment options, built-in reporting tools, and many more.
Some of the best e-learning solutions are Talent LMS, Teachable, Docebo, Asentia, Lessonly, TalentCards, and many more.
Selling Courses From Your Own E-learning Website
Another choice is to create an e-learning website on your own. The major benefit of creating a website from scratch is that you can add your personal touch on how you would like your website to appear, what functionalities you want to integrate and what features you would like to turn-off.
In case, you want to go with the second option, I’ll let you know how to create an interactive e-learning social community website within simple steps. Let’s roll on to step 2.
Step 2: Get WordPress Hosting And Domain
In order to brand your e-learning website, first of all, you have to buy a secure web hosting plan and domain name to create your web identity.
A domain name should be such that attracts your potential leads and brands your business. You can choose from many domain name extensions like .com, .co, .org, .net, .info, .tech, etc.
Make sure you keep your domain name:
- Simple and keyword-friendly
- Unique and brandable
Some of the best companies that offer a secure web hosting plan are SiteGround, A2 Hosting, Hostgator, Bluehost, and Godaddy.
Step 3: Install WordPress, BuddyPress, And LearnDash
Now, that you have a secure hosting plan to launch your e-learning social community, you need to install and set up WordPress and the following WordPress Plugins to integrate the required functionality with your dream website.
WordPress
WordPress is one of the best and powerful content management system trusted by many web developers these days. Even a non-coder can create a website like an expert using the combination of relevant WordPress plugins and themes.
Once you got your web hosting plan and domain name, next, you need to install and set up WordPress. After installing WordPress, you will see a simple website with the options to create posts, pages, categories, media along with other custom settings get ready.
But that’s not the only thing you want. You still need some useful LMS and social community plugins and an LMS theme that integrates e-learning and social capabilities to your simple WordPress site. And, this is where you start creating your dream website.
LearnDash
After that you have set up your WordPress website, next from the plugins tab under the dashboard, you have to add LearnDash plugin.
LearnDash is a WordPress LMS plugin that offers the best functionality to sell online courses on WordPress. Being the most trusted WordPress learning management system plugin, it helps you to create and sell courses, track your learners’ progress, deliver certificates to the learners, award points & badges, and a lot more.
Some important features provided by LearnDash that power up your brand include:
- Course Management
- Course Monetization
- Administration
- Supported Tech Tools
BuddyPress
After that, you have set up your WordPress e-learning website, you need to integrate social network features to convert your e-learning website into a social e-learning community.
Navigate to the plugins tab under the dashboard and add the BuddyPress plugin. BuddyPress is a free WordPress social network plugin that allows integrating social community features to the WordPress website.
It is an open-source and completely customizable plugin and offers a variety of features.
Your community members can play with a lot of options with your social community. For example, they can create posts and groups, do a private conversation with friends, check their activity feeds, and much more.
Step4: Set Up WordPress E-learning Theme That Supports BuddyPress And LearnDash
BuddyPress and LearnDash both have their own set of styling and management features. You will require a WordPress theme that integrates both the plugins to make it easy for you to customize your website.
One such WordPress theme is Reign LearnMate that offers in-built support for BuddyPress and LearnDash.
Key features of LearnMate Learndash are:
- Attractive grid & listing options to display your courses
- Distraction-free layout to let your learners stay focused on the course content
- Inbuilt course reviews to allow learners to share their feedback
- Ready to use demos to set up e-learning website within minutes
- Color & Typography Options to customize your website theme
- Stunning Header Layouts to give your site a personal touch
- RTL Support to switch the stylesheet to RTL
- Attractive Learndash Extra Widgets
Try WordPress E-learning Theme Now
Get Started With Your E-learning Social Community Website!
This is how you can start your own e-learning social community website. So, which course you are going to sell from your e-learning website?
Make sure you keep all of these steps in mind and don’t forget to share your feedback and queries in the comments section below.
Stay tuned!
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