Over the years, the means to create, customize and deliver e-learning content has developed beyond the ordinary. One way is to use WordPress, connect it with an LMS plugin to add e-learning capabilities to your website.
Talking about plugins, it’s no secret that Learndash is the leader of the e-learning space. Using this tool, you can easily create and sell courses and start an online learning business or community.
But to design a course website specific to your needs, you may need more than just LearnDash. With the ever-evolving e-learning industry, not only do you need to be up to date with the latest trends and forms of course creation but also with the needs of your learners.
Are they not satisfied with the course design and delivery? Do you need to up your game and find a customized solution tailored to their learning needs? If the answer to these questions is YES then you’re in the right place!
In this article, we’ll talk about how you can design a custom e-learning website with either the LearnDash Elementor Integration or custom LMS development, and why the Elementor Integration is better.
How to create a customized e-learning website?
There are several ways in which you can create courses on LearnDash and optimize them for an everlasting learning experience. Let’s look at two of them.
- Taking the DIY route i.e using tools like Elementor with your LearnDash site
- Or, outsourcing the development to a native developer to get a custom e-learning solution
But, which one is better? Well, to decide that let’s look at the advantages of using each.
Using the Learndash Elementor Integration
Before we get into what the Elementor Integration for LearnDash can do, let’s take a look at what is Elementor?
Elementor is a page builder, designed to make it easier for users to build WordPress websites. It’s a drag and drag-drop builder that comes with a visual editor to create dynamic learning websites on the go.
It is suitable for creators without any coding background, designers who want to work faster, and developers who want to meet their clients’ requirements.
Advantages of Using Elementor for LearnDash
Extremely User-Friendly
One of the most prominent advantages of using Elementor is its smart and intuitive interface. It’s extremely easy to use and customizable enough to create a website that aligns with your UNIQUE vision.
Users also get access to a ton of ready-made templates for their website or specific pages (like courses, lessons, topics, and quizzes). So all there’s left to do is alter the content as per your needs and off you go.
In addition to this, it’s also developer-friendly. It offers global custom CSS, shortkeys, cheatsheets, and the ability to easily import and export designs from one site to another.
Powerful creation and customization capabilities
Since Elementor comes with a lot of ready-to-use website kits and custom templates, users can create powerful pages that will stand out from the competition.
Another plus side of using this page builder plugin is that it offers a lot of flexibility to the users to build and design their e-learning website. Not only does it allow users to customize the course pages and content elements but also customizes the navigation links, buttons, headers, and other dynamic LearnDash elements.
What’s more, is that it integrates perfectly well with almost all WordPress themes and a lot of third-party plugins to further extend the functionality of the LMS.
Control over the site and eLearning content
When building a website, the control is in the hands of the educators. Using themes can limit your options to design the content in your way. Using page builders like Elementor does not mean that you won’t be working with a theme.
It just means that it gives you more freedom to build the pages from scratch, adding widgets that you require and removing the ones that you don’t. You just need to drag & drop and VOILA! Your page is ready!
Using Native LMS Development for LearnDash
Another route is to hire a developer or a development team who can design the site and create specific features for you. One of the main reasons you would want custom LMS development would be if the LMS lacks a unique feature that your learning program needs to deliver quality education.
Advantages of Custom Development
Hassle-free creation
With custom development, you only have to worry about ideation. The developer will take care of bringing your ideas to life. For example, to create engaging content and design pages, you will only have to decide how you want your pages to look and the developer can do that for you.
Unique learning solution aligning with your vision
Based on your guideline, a developer will be able to use the tools necessary and take your course content one step further to develop a solution unique to your needs. They can work with the theme of your choice, build pages from scratch, and ensure that the learning experience is tailored for your users.
For example- if you want a custom widget for your LearnDash LMS, a developer can easily create one as he has the technical know-how.
High performance and an improved learning experience
Well, by now we know that a developer focuses on creating custom features and designing your course website for a more personalized experience. But in addition to that, they can also help with faster and more efficient development.
Since they have the technical expertise of working in the backend, they can ensure that your course pages are optimized for speed and that they load up with a minimum delay. Thus, improving the user experience.
Now that we’ve understood the advantages of both, let’s look at why Learndash Elementor Integration is better!
Why Learndash Elementor Beats Native LMS Development – 5 Reasons
1. It’s less expensive and quick
Elementor comes with a variety of plans for different types of users and project scopes starting at $49/year. Each plan has ready-made website kits, templates, widgets, and the drag and drops visual builder to get you started right off the bat.
This way you want to spend much time brainstorming ideas, as you can use the custom templates and rearrange the design to create a new one.
On the other hand, a development team might use 3rd party plugins and resources to increase the workflow which can often come at a higher price in addition to the service charge.
2. Creates complex and high-quality websites with ease
As mentioned earlier Elementor is made for both casual and advanced users. The ease with which you can develop an e-learning website from scratch is amazing.
Users can easily break down complex-looking designs to re-create their version. With the live drag and drop editor, every part of the website can be customized without any coding to create a cutting-edge e-learning website that beats the competition.
There is a whole community offering help, advice, and support to back up this powerful visual page builder. In addition to this, the unique page builder is highly flexible. Often it’s felt that to create a high-end and polished website, you will require a developer.
But, if you’re a power user who knows a little bit about coding, then there’s a lot more than you can do with Elementor. Like LearnDash this page builder is also open-source and offers a huge knowledge base including tons of shortcodes.
So you can very easily tweak its code and get the most out of your learning site and courses.
3. Integrates with 3rd party plugins
The Elementor Integration for LearnDash plays well with a lot of popular plugins in the WordPress Ecosystem like Mailchimp. WooCommerce, Zapier, etc.
So to extend the functionality of your learning website, all you need to do is connect with your favorite tools. For example, to optimize your courses for SEO, you can simply connect with Yoast to check the SEO friendliness of your content like Titles, Meta descriptions, URLs, etc.
This way you can mitigate the need of hiring a professional for custom SEO features, as Yoast itself offers a lot of resources that you can access on the go.
4. Optimized for speed and performance
When you’re taking the custom development route, you don’t have to worry about the implementation of your ideas and the user experience as the developer usually takes care of it in addition to designing your LMS.
They make sure that your website is up to date and that the pages load fast for an uninterrupted user experience
But this new integration covers that aspect too. Elementor is one of the FASTEST WordPress website builders, built with the highest code standards. It is built keeping in mind the needs of modern educators and learners alike.
It has built-in features for top website performance. For example, it has custom fonts to load fonts locally and reduce external requests. With each new version, you can expect improvement in terms of overall site performance.
5. Meets present as well as future needs
Apart from its ease of use, the LearnDash Elementor Integration is a must for pioneering course creators. If you’re looking to make some real long-term investment, Elementor provides stability and evolves with your organization, and reshapes to meet unforeseen needs in the future.
So, if you’re a forward thinker and want to stay up to date with the latest trends in the ever-growing e-learning industry, Elementor can serve you well as the platform keeps releasing new features and functionalities.
However, when you’re working with an LMS developer, you’re often bound by a timeline and they might also charge extra for your future requirements.
Read the article to know more: How to Integrate Elementor with LearnDash
Our Opinion
Whether you choose a custom developer or use an integration like Elementor for LearnDash. The route that you take depends upon your NEEDS.
Modern LMS tools are more advanced than ever before. They are easy to use, flexible and customizable to an extent that you might not need custom development at all.
So you shouldn’t be afraid of unlocking the power of page builders and designing your website the way you want.
I hope this article was helpful and gave you much-needed information.
Feel free to comment below with any more queries.
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