WordPress has become one of the leading CMSs for e-learning sites throughout the years. This was possible because of so many factors such as its easiness to merge with other plugins. WordPress led to the development of LearnDash. LearnDash is a corporate training and skill development learning management system. LearnDash development has facilitated and relished e-learning for everybody. The future for e-learning is bright as advancements in fields like artificial intelligence and virtual reality are increasing.
Pre-requisites
To follow this tutorial, it is crucial that you already know how to:
– Set up WordPress on your site.
– Install LearnDash on your WordPress site.
Firstly, the nature of WordPress as a content management system offers a unique benefit in terms of course administration. Secondly, WordPress offers an easy place for employees to train and improve business skills through the website of a firm. Thirdly, for organizational training, WordPress makes it easy to include custom plugins such as LearnDash. Lastly, the combination of WordPress and LearnDash is better than open-source and cloud-based LMSs because of its easiness to bring the e-Learning experience to an organization.
How to set up an Employee Training And Management Platform with LearnDash
The following steps are to be followed carefully to set up your employee training and management platform with LearnDash on WordPress.
- Step #1 Pick an eLearning theme.
- Step #2 Set up Instructors to create and manage courses with WISDM Instructor Role.
- Step #3 Import Demo content for initial courses set up.
- Step #4 Set up student groups with designated group leaders, with WISDM GR.
- Step #5 Set up a learner-instructor networking system with BuddyPress.
- Step #6 Set up forums for group discussions with bbPress.
- Step #7 Set up your payment gateway integration plugin.
- Step #8 Set up any additional Plugins you might need.
- Membership plugin
- Quiz/assignment reporting plugin
- Email marketing integration plugin
#1 Pick an eLearning theme
After installing WordPress and the LearnDash plugin, it’s now time to install an appropriate theme for your site. A theme is a WordPress package that beautifies your site and enables you to do further customization on the looks of your website.
We will be using the eLumine theme which is a LearnDash theme focused and equipped with a Unyson page builder. The eLumine theme is both recommended and advantage to corporate training for the reasons below:
– It comes with a ready-to-use starting site template.
– It is simple to modify to meet the needs of your company.
– It gives several layouts to focus on the details of the LearnDash course page.
– It offers an advanced course and quiz module for LearnDash, as well as a complete gamification experience.
– It has a responsive layout that adapts to all device screen sizes.
– It improves the readability of your courses and provides a fantastic look and feel for your students to appreciate by encouraging student involvement.
– It also offers a variety of color options from which to pick or use a new one by importing easy CSS custom color files.
Theme Installation and Activation
- Go to the Admin Dashboard of your website.
- Navigate to Appearance > Themes.
- Click Add New button.
- Now click on the Upload Theme button.
- Upload the zip file and click Install Now.
Please note that this method requires certain conditions to be met, such as the PHP Memory limit should be 256M and Max upload file size should be 64M. Refer to this link for more details.
Next, you will need to activate the eLumine theme and you do that with the following steps:
- Once the theme is active, you should see a new menu item called WisdmLabs License Options.
- Open this page and enter the license key against eLumine theme.
- Now, click Activate.
- You are now ready to use eLumine and will see notifications on the website whenever an update is released.
- Please remember to take a full backup of your website before updating the theme.
- Having issues activating the theme? Connect with us here.
You’re fine to go if you follow the procedures outlined above. If you are having trouble installing the theme, please see our theme installation guide here.
#2 Set up Instructors to create and manage courses with WISDM Instructor Role
Your e-Learning business will need instructors with different privileges, especially for corporate training. The instructor will manage the entire course modules and reduce workloads for the admin.
WISDM Instructor Role for LearnDash handles instructorship allocation. It lets you set up Course Instructors who can create, manage, and sell courses, without sharing admin privileges. The instructor role reduces, the workload of managing the entire e-Learning platform for the admin. By doing this saves you time and energy that you can use to focus on other vital aspects like marketing, growth, etc. of your LearnDash website.
To set up an instructor who can create and manage all your courses within your LearnDash you have to follow the steps below:
Creating the Registration Form
– To create a new registration form, click on Add New button.
You will find yourself on a page which looks like the picture below. Give a suitable title and choose for your instructor’s registration form the relevant form fields.
Click on the Form Settings tab to set user registration settings once all the fields have been added.
On this page, Set the Default User Role setting to Instructor and click on the Create Form button.
Deploying the Instructor Registration Form
Again when the form has been generated, copy the shortcode by clicking on the clipboard icon next to the Update Form and Preview button.
After this, create a WordPress Page or edit an existing one, depending on where you want to display your Instructor Registration Form.
Now, insert a new shortcode block to the page and paste the copied shortcode in the shortcode block on that page.
Then hit Publish or update the page.
Test your LearnDash Instructor Registration Form
After completing the above steps, visit your page and you will find your Instructor’s registration form with the fields you set up.
Fill all the essential fields and click on Submit.
#3 Import Demo content for initial courses set up
Doing all the initial setups yourself could be tedious, however, the eLumine theme offers a demo data import advantage. This process installs the essential pages that come with the theme on your site.
Once you initialize the process of importing demo data, you are presented with three styles that you can choose from namely, the Classic LMS Demo, the Single Instructor LMS Demo, and the Master Course LMS Demo. This is the more reason you should buy the eLumine theme for your LearnDash setup.
Things to remember before installing eLumine demo content
– Make a thorough backup of your website before installing the sample content so that you can simply restore it to the previous stage if something goes wrong.
– LearnDash is a premium plugin that is not included with the theme. As a result, before installing the demo material, ensure that LearnDash is installed and enabled.
– If the LearnDash plugin is not active when demo material is installed, LearnDash-related data (such as courses) will not be imported.
– Make sure your upload directory has standard WordPress file and folder permissions, i.e. the theme should be allowed to receive and store files like images and videos in the upload directory.
– If you want to install content linked to a BuddyPress plugin, please make sure the plugin is active before you begin demo installation.
Demo Installation
For further details on the demo installation process, please read the following steps. You can opt out of resetting eLumine’s website and use an external plugin such as WP Reset. You can immediately utilize Full Install without Website Reset Mode if you have already reset the content with such a plugin.
By going to the Appearance> Theme Setup Menu you can start the demo content installation.
There are now several distinct demo materials based on your requirements.
Minimal: The course, goods, etc. are not actually necessary, but simply the most basic items like menus, thematic settings, sample pages, widgets, etc.
Full Without Website Reset: The whole demo contents will be imported to make it precisely like the demo site of eLumine. If you have an existing website, the current information won’t be removed, but new data is created.
Caution: This is not ideal because the sample material was created for websites with no current content. Because you may encounter various difficulties, such as Course-Lesson associations being lost in demo courses imported and other similar concerns, taking a database backup is strongly advised.
Full With Website Reset: Removes all current material and substitutes it with fresh content.
#4 Set up student groups with designated group leaders, with WISDM GR.
You will need to distribute your students in groups when you start your corporate e-learning program. In addition, you must appoint leaders and instructors to such groups.
The Plugin provides the benefit of handling group student registration, assigning Leaders to Groups, managing class registrations, and seeing progress reports with the premium LearnDash Group registration plugin.
That is why the WISDM GR plugin is necessary and is recommended for you.
A standard group option is available for LearnDash, so why pick our plugin? The WISDM GR Plugin allows you to even register students in a bulk and accelerate course registration using LearnDash LMS’s finest Group management feature.
- To implement this, on the dashboard click on groups and then click on add new.
This would give you the interface to create and assign group leaders to a group.
After creating the group, navigate to groups and you will see the just created group.
Use the edit as block option to add a group leader to a group from the list.
Now the group has a group leader, let us proceed to install other relevant plugins to our learning management system.
#5 Set up a learner-instructor networking system with BuddyPress
The BuddyPress plugin is a major element for improving LearnDash corporate training and skills development in your organization. The plugin provides the social network and community for your students on your website. This community will facilitate greater learning advantages among the students. This is how to set up BuddyPress on your LearnDash website.
On a user’s BuddyPress profile page, there are numerous fields like education, achievement, profile, email, residence, Facebook profile link, Twitter profile link, YouTube profile link.
These are specialized fields since they are presented in a distinct designated place when activated on the profile page.
You have to take these two steps to configure this for your users:
- Create fields.
- Map it to the Profile page locations.
Setup BuddyPress Fields profile
- Navigate to the Dashboard > Users > Profile Fields menu page to create the BuddyPress Profile fields.
- Click on the button “Add New Field.”
- Create the 8 fields above (only those you wish to use).
Map Profile Fields
- Proceed to Dashboard > Users > Map Profile Fields Admin Page.
- Choose the fields that match the available options.
- The profile page contains two “special” areas of qualification.
- “Education” and “Achievements” are by default.
- You can use the text input fields available for each of these areas to modify the label displayed on the profile page.
- Also, by clicking on the “Change Image button”, you can change the icons shown in these fields.
- Lastly, click the save button.
Now each user can configure his or her front-end profile. They only have to visit their profile page of BuddyPress and click Edit.
#6 Set up forums for group discussions with bbPress
Your LearnDash bbPress plugin is also another component to add to your corporate training site. The integration of LearnDash bbPress enables you to integrate bbPress forums into courses. Any student with access to this course can post in the forum if you connect a forum with such a course. With this setup, students can connect and offer help to other coursemates when they need help. In turn, this minimizes your workload to only critical issues that require your attention.
Installation
- Option 1: Add-ons Menu (requires an active LearnDash license)
- In your WordPress admin area, navigate to LearnDash LMS > Add-Ons
- Locate the bbPress for LearnDash add-on
- Click Install Now
- Click the Activate Plugin button
- Before you can connect a forum with a course, you must first create a new forum in bbPress. If you’ve previously done this, you may skip this step.
- We’re assuming you’ve previously created a LearnDash course. You will need at least one course for this integration.
- Create a Forum
- Navigate to Forums > New Forum
- Give your forum a title
- (optional) Write an intro message & adjust the forum attributes (type, status, visibility, etc.)
- Associate Forums with Courses
- Now it’s time to link a forum to a course
-
- On the Edit Forum page, scroll down to the LearnDash bbPress Settings box
- Under Associated Course(s), click on a course to associate it with that forum
- NOTE: You may select one or more courses. Hold down the CTRL key (CMD on Mac) to select multiple courses.
- If you select multiple courses by mistake, you can use the “Clear All” button to start over.
Once a course (or courses) has been selected, ensure that your forum is published or updated. Now every user who has access to the course has access to the forum. When a user is not included in the course, such a user cannot view or post on the forum. This is all that is necessary for the integration to be set up, but let us look at a few further options.
- Additional Choices (Post Limit Access)
- This is only true if this forum has been connected with more than one course. You have two options for determining who gets access to the forum:
-
- All (as is the case by default): Users must be able to access all specified courses in order to post to the forum.
- Optional: Users just need access to one of the specified courses to publish on the forum.
- Message Shown to Users with No Access
This is where the message given to users with no access to the forum can be customized. The notification states by default that: This forum is restricted to members of the associated course(s).You can adapt the message to include a link or any other message to purchase the course. Basic HTML is supported.
For the non-enrolled users, If you want them to see the forum posts & topics but not to be able to post replies, click this option. If this option is used, the above notice will be ignored. Non-registered users will view the forum and all its discussions, but cannot post or answer.
#7 Set up your payment gateway integration plugin
To make money from your corporate training and skill development website, you must include a payment mechanism. A payment gateway is a third-party financial service that accepts and processes consumer payments on behalf of a business. Students use this method to pay for the courses they sign up for on your website.
LearnDash includes built-in PayPal payment capabilities. There are no additional plugins or add-ons required; however, some settings are required before you may sell your courses via PayPal.
Why should You Use PayPal?
- PayPal is a good thing to consider if you want to start selling courses quickly and easily.
- You provide one course with a simple pricing structure or simply a few courses.
PayPal Settings
Before you can start receiving payments, your PayPal settings must be filled and completed.
- In your WordPress admin dashboard, navigate to LearnDash LMS > Settings
- Click on the PayPal Settings tab
Now let’s go through each option:
PayPal Email
This refers to the email address that you used to register on PayPal.
IMPORTANT
Seller Email (which is entered in the PayPal settings for your PayPal account) and Receiver Email (the PayPal account’s primary email) must be the same.
PayPal Currency
This refers to a three-letter code that corresponds to the country in which you reside.
Popular currency codes include:
USD for United States DollarCAD for Canadian DollarAUD for Australian Dollar
PayPal Country
This refers to a two-letter code that associated with the country in which you reside.
Popular country codes include:
US for United StatesCA for CanadaAU for Australia
PayPal Cancel URL
This is where a user gets routed if his payment is canceled or the payment fails.
You could construct a custom page or just redirect the user back to your site using your support or contact information. Enter the whole URL and start with https://.
PayPal Return
This refers to the location where a user will be redirected after a successful payment is made. We recommend developing a “thank you” or “next steps” page or sending them to a login or account page. Enter the full URL, starting with https://.
IMPORTANT
Please ensure that automatic redirects are activated on your PayPal account. If not activated, you will be obliged to click “Return to Merchant.”
PayPal Notify URL
This URL must not be altered and should be pre-populated for you. LearnDash needs it in order to connect with PayPal.
If this option is missing, please enter the following URL to substitute your real domain name for “yoursite.com.”
https://yoursite.com/sfwd-lms/paypal
Course Configuration
The last thing you need to do is establish a course to accept payment, after you’ve configured your Paypal settings.
- In the WordPress admin area, navigate to Learn Dash LMS > Course
- Click on the course you’d like to sell with PayPal
- Click on Settings at the top
- Scroll down to Course Access Settings
- Set the “Access Mode” to one of two values:
- Buy Now: Use “Buy Now” for one-time payments
- Recurring: Use “Recurring” if you’d like to set up a recurring payment (aka: subscription)
And finally, fill in your price in the Course Price input field. Ex: 29.99
- The currency symbol is added automatically for you.
- You can skip decimal point & cents (ex: ’29’) if your price contains zero cents.
You need to provide the Billing Cycle for recurrent payments in days, weeks, months, or years.
The User Experience
You will notice a “Take this Course” button when you visit your course page (this language can be customized using custom labels). By clicking the button, a user is taken to PayPal.com to select their form of payment and to finish the transaction. The transaction is carried out on the website of PayPal.
Any of the following payment options may be used by users:
- Credit Card
- Debit Card
- Linked Bank Account
- PayPal Balance
Upon completion of payment, the customer will be sent to any URL that was provided in the PayPal Return option above. A new account is generated immediately and this user is registered for the course he has just paid.
#8 Set up any additional Plugins you might need
The objective here is to make your corporate training and skill development website as effective and lucrative as possible. To reach this aim, you must integrate all of the essential plugins, add-ons, and settings into your website. This, in turn, will provide the greatest experience for your students while also returning the highest profit on your investment. Let’s have a look at these plugins one by one.
Membership Plugin
For a membership plugin, I will recommend the paid membership pro. Here are some reasons why you should use Paid Memberships Pro along with LearnDash.
- Create membership levels, and assign a course (or courses) to different levels.
- Offer coupons or discount codes for your courses.
- Sell courses in a bundle (i.e. one price provides access to multiple courses).
- Sell access to courses as an ongoing subscription.
Installation
Option 1: Add-ons Menu (requires an active LearnDash license)
- In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to LearnDash LMS > Add-Ons
- Locate the Paid Memberships Pro for LearnDash add-on
- Click Install Now
- Click the Activate Plugin button
Option 2: Manual Upload
- Download the plugin file (must be logged in to download)
- In WordPress, navigate to PLUGINS > ADD NEW
- Click Upload Plugin
- Browse for the .zip file you downloaded in Step 1
- Click Install Now
- Click Activate Plugin
Create a Membership Level
Before you can assign a LearnDash course to membership in Paid Memberships Pro, you need to:
- create a course
- create a membership level
We’ll assume you have already created a LearnDash course.
To create a membership level in Paid Memberships Pro:
- Navigate to Membership > Settings > Levels
- Click the Create a Membership Level button
- Fill out the required information
Before you complete this step, please read the next section on assigning a course to your membership level.
Assign a Course to a Membership Level
You’ll want to link your LearnDash course(s) with your new membership level before saving it. You are creating this on the same page.
This means that when a person buys (or just accesses) the membership level, he or she also automatically receives access to the course(s).
- On the Membership > Settings > Levels page
- Scroll down & look for the LearnDash heading
- Next to Courses, choose the course(s) that you want to assign to this membership level
- NOTE: You may link one, or multiple, courses.
Now you’re finished creating the membership level & assigning your courses to it. Be sure to click the “Save Level” button at the bottom to save your changes.
Alternative Method
It is most easy to assign a course to a membership level when you create your membership. However, access to the courses can also be controlled through the course page itself.
- Navigate to LearnDash LMS > Course
- Click on the course you’d like to assign to a membership level
- In the sidebar, look for Require Membership
- Check the box next to the membership level that this course should be assigned to
/NOTE
Both approaches are synchronized. This implies that if the setting is changed at one location, it will be modified automatically at the other. Use the most convenient way for you then.
Set Up Your Course
After your membership level is set up in Paid Memberships Pro, you’ll need to make a few adjustments to your LearnDash course.
- Navigate to LearnDash LMS > Courses
- Click on the course that corresponds with a Paid Memberships Pro membership level
- Click the Settings tab at the top
- Under Course Access Settings, look for Access Mode
- Set this to Closed
- In the Button URL field, enter the URL to your Paid Memberships Pro “Levels Page”
You can discover your “Levels Page” URL in the WordPress admin area by clicking on the “View Page” button beside the “Levels page.” You will be able to use Memberships > Settings > Pages.
Now, when visiting your course page, the button “Take this Course” will lead them to the relevant Levels page, where the membership level can be added to their cart and the purchase process is completed.
Retroactive Member Access
If you have previously installed Paid Membership Pro with live membership levels and members, the retroactive access procedure for members is ready after activating the Paid Membership Pro for LearnDash.
This method will enroll you in the LearnDash courses that you have selected in conjunction with your membership levels.
If you are not ready for this process, you can dismiss the message. If you are willing to go through the retroactive process:
- Go to Memberships > LearnDash and press the Run button.
Please wait for the procedure to finish before moving to the next page.
Quiz/assignment reporting plugin
The quiz/assignment reporting plugin is another add-on that will simplify the statistical experience for your corporate training website. With this plugin, you can export a spreadsheet file that can be further analyzed in your spreadsheet application. It can even be exported as a CSV file which can be used for data science and other statistical operation. You can also leverage the statistical reporting that this plugin comes with by default for visualizing and interpreting your quiz/assignment report data.
Installation Guide
- After the purchase of the Quiz reporting extension, an email with the plugin download link and the buy receipt id will be sent to the registered email id. Use the download link to get the plugin.
- Go to Plugin -> Add New menu in your admin area and click on the ‘Upload’ tab. Choose the ‘quiz-reporting-extension.zip’ file to be uploaded and click on ‘Install Now’.
- After you have installed the plugin successfully, click the Activate Plugin link or activates your plugin’s Quiz Reporting extension via the plugin page.
- Under the Plugins section of your dashboard, a Quiz Reporting extension license sub-menu is created. Enter the purchased product license key by clicking on this option. Click on Activate License. Where a license is valid, the status message of ‘Active’ will appear, otherwise ‘Inactive’ will appear.
- When the appropriate license key is entered and the license activated, the results export option is added to every quiz and quiz entry (at a per quiz level).
User Guide
Following the successful installation and activation of the Quiz Reporting extension plugin, a result export option will be enabled on a per quiz and per result per quiz level. To access the options, navigate to LearnDash LMS -> Quizzes -> Quiz -> Statistics.
User Level Export: A Specific User’s Response
To export a specific user’s quiz response, click on the ‘Export Response’ button that appears for that user. The response should be retrieved in a CSV or Excel file that contains user replies for each quiz question.
Quiz Level Export: All User Response
The Quiz level export option exports the replies of all users who have taken the quiz and saves them as a CSV or Excel file.
Details Exported
When the export option is clicked, the details exported are:
- The Question
- The available response options
- The correct answer
- The user’s response
- The maximum number of cpoints which can be scored
- The points scored by the user
- The time taken to answer the question and
- The question type.
- For quiz level reports, the details are grouped on a per-user basis.
Email marketing integration plugin
Here’s why e-marketing is one of the most crucial addons for your corporate training and skill development website. The information collected from students when they sign up for your courses may be used to contact them through email or social media about any offers you have on your website. You can inform them about a new course that they must enroll in. You may also use this plugin to keep them up to date on their whereabouts and development.
For this tutorial, we’ll be using the LearnDash Notifications add-on, which allows you to send emails to your students when specific events occur on your site, such as finishing a course, finishing a lesson, passing/failing an exam, and so on. You have the ability to specify when these alerts are delivered, who receives them, and the whole email message itself. For each user, you can even enter dynamic content and insert various information according to the particular actions that took place.
Installation
Option 1: Add-ons Menu (requires an active LearnDash license)
- In your WordPress admin area, navigate to LearnDash LMS > Add-Ons
- Locate the LearnDash Notifications add-on
- Click Install Now
- Click the Activate Plugin button
Option 2: Manual Upload
- Download the plugin file (must be logged in to download)
- In WordPress, navigate to PLUGINS > ADD NEW
- Click Upload Plugin
- Browse for the .zip file you downloaded in Step 1
- Click Install Now
- Click Activate Plugin
Status Menu
This option is available under LearnDash LMS > Status and is designed to assist you to solve problems with your notifications.
Status
This section gives an overview of the following information:
- Server Cron Setup: Detects whether you have configured a cron job for sending notifications.
- Queued Emails in DB: Number of emails that are scheduled to be sent in the database.
- Last Run: The last time the cron job was successfully triggered.
Create a Notification
To get started creating a notification…
- Navigate to LearnDash LMS > Notifications
- Click the Add New Notification button
NOTE
The amount of notifications you generate is not limited, but you should think about how much email you are sending. Please note too that the majority of web servers (where you host your site) do not send a lot of e-mails. If you have problems, please see our Email delivery section below.
Title
Your notification title will serve as the email subject line.
Email Content
The following part will show the contents of your message – the message you wish to deliver to your users. You can utilize the top formatting button, input pictures, move your Visual to Text mode (if you want to type your own HTML), etc.
You have a lot of flexibility here, but remember the reason why you send it and the span of attention of your user.
Email Trigger
The action that will cause your email to be sent is referred to as the email trigger. Depending on the trigger you select, you may see a few more possibilities.
.
When you choose the “User completes a course” trigger, for example, you may send an email every time any course is finished (“All Courses”), or you can select a specific course from the Course selection. The same choices apply to alerts for specific lessons, topics, and quizzes.
Some triggers, such as those for assignments and essay questions, have no extra alternatives and apply to everyone.
Complete List of Triggers
Here is the entire list of triggers available in LearnDash Notifications version 1.3.0:
- User enrolls into a group
- User enrolls into a course
- User completes a course
- User completes a lesson
- A scheduled lesson is available to user
- User completes a topic
- User completes a quiz
- User passes a quiz
- User fails a quiz
- User submits a quiz
- An essay has been submitted
- An essay question has been graded
- An assignment is uploaded
- An assignment is approved
- User hasn’t logged in for “X” days
- “X” days before course expires
- “X” days after a course expires
Conclusion
Finally, we’ve learned a lot about how combining LearnDash, the WisdmLabs Instructor Role plugin, and the other mentioned plugins can enhance your corporate training website and assist your workers, students, or members of your organization in upskilling and being able to stand out in their profession.
Developing a corporate training website is unquestionably a solution for upskilling and staying engaged in one’s profession and career. With LearnDash and the WISDMLAB plugins, you can be confident that your organization’s personnel will remain sharp and stand out at work.
