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How to Add a Learning Management System in WordPress with WP Courseware

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Do you want to create courses and manage classes in WordPress? Recently one of our readers asked us how they add a learning management system in WordPress? In this article, we will show you how to add a learning management system in WordPress with WP Courseware, so you can run courses, manage classes and students, track progress, and so on.

WP Courseware - Learning Management System for WordPress

Why Use WP Courseware as Your WordPress LMS

Most site owners who want to add a learning management system to their websites are not programmers or coders. You need a solution that takes care of all the complex programming and coding in the background. WP Courseware does that really well.

  • WP Courseware is extremely easy to setup and manage.
  • It comes with unlimited courses, lessons, quizzes, surveys and students.
  • Creating courses and lessons is as simple as drag and drop.
  • WP Courseware integrates beautifully with most popular WordPress membership plugins. You can sell courses with memberships on your site.
  • It also integrates with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, allowing you to sell courses as products.
  • There are extensive documentation and help available on the plugin’s website. From the basic setup to advanced integrations, everything is well covered.

Getting Started with WP Courseware

First thing you will need to do is to install and activate the WP Courseware plugin.

WP Courseware is a premium plugin with prices starting from $99 for 2 sites with 1 year of support and updates.

Adding Courses

WP Courseware will add two new menu items labeled Training Courses and Course Units to your WordPress admin menu. Training courses is where you design your courses and modules. Course units is where you add actual lessons for your course.

Simply click on Training Courses » Add Course to create your first course.

Adding a new course in WP Courseware LMS

Provide a name and description for your course. After that you need to choose whether you want all course units to be visible to the users or just next course unit in the line.

Using the next unit in line option will restrict students from seeing the next course unit until they finish the previous unit.

Don’t forget to click on save all details button to store your settings.

You will notice other tabs on the add new course window. These tabs allow you to change messages and emails that your students will receive when they join this course.

Creating Modules

A module is a collection of course units grouped together. Lessons in a series can be added into a module. Each training course can have as many modules as you want.

Course Modules

Simply visit Training Courses » Add Module to start adding your course modules. Provide a title for the module, select a training course, and enter the module description.

Adding Course Units

Course Units are like individual lessons that can be part of any module or training course in WP Courseware. Simply visit Course Units » Add New to create your first course unit.

Creating a course unit

You will see a basic post edit screen where you can create your course unit. You can add text, audio/video, images, or attach documents just like you would in any WordPress post. Once you are satisfied with the course unit, click on the Publish button.

Course units you create here are not part of any training course or module yet. We will come to that part later.

Adding Quizzes

WP Courseware comes with quizzes and survey. These quizzes can be added to any module or training course. You can even require a student to pass a quiz before they can move to new module or training course. Simply visit Training Courses » Add Quiz/Survey page.

Adding a quiz or survey

First you need to provide a title and description for the quiz/survey. After that you need to choose a Quiz Type. You can choose from survey mode, quiz mode – blocking, and quiz mode non-blocking.

Choosing the quiz mode – blocking as your quiz type, will require users to pass the quiz in order to move on to the next module or training course.

Next, you need to switch to Quiz Behavior Settings tab. This is where you can set the passing percentage, quiz attempts, and time restriction settings for the quiz.

Quiz behavior settings

Saving your quiz settings will show you the questions toolbar on the right. You can choose from adding multiple choice, true false, and open ended questions. You can allow users to upload documents as their quiz answers.

Question tools

Once you have enough questions in your quiz, click on the save all settings and questions button to store your quiz.

Adding Course Units and Quizzes into Modules and Courses

After creating your quizzes and course units, it is time to add them to your training courses and modules. Simply visit Training Courses page where you will see the list of all your training courses. Click on the modules, units, quiz ordering button under the actions column.

Adding units and quizzes to courses and modules

This will bring you to the order course modules and units screen. Here you can drag and drop the course units and quizzes to the modules.

Assigning units and quizzes to modules

Displaying Course Outline on Front-end

WP Courseware makes it quite easy to display your course online on the front-end. Start by creating a new WordPress page and add this shortcode:

[wpcourse course=”1″]

Replace course=”1″ with the ID of the course you want to display. You can find course ID on the main training course page.

Finding course ID

Controling Access and Selling Courses

WP Courseware offers multiple ways to control who can access the courses on your site and how you can sell the courses.

Method 1: Using WordPress Registration

You can use the default WordPress registration system to control who can access the courses. Using this method, you can create a custom login page with Theme My Login and allow users to register and login from the front-end of your site.

Simply visit Training Courses and edit your course. On the course edit screen, click on the User Access tab.

User access settings for a course

There are two options for you to select. The first one automatically allows any registered users access to the course, and the second option allows you to manually add users to the course.

If you choose the manual method, then here is how you will add users to a course. Visit the Users screen in WordPress admin area and click on the ‘Update Course Access Permissions’ button next to a username.

Updating user access to a course

You can now simply check or uncheck the box under the Allowed Access column to give or remove access from a course.

Manually giving or revoking access to a course

Method 2: Using a WordPress Membership or eCommerce Plugin

This method is ideal if you want to sell courses along with memberships on your site. WP Courseware offers integrations with most popular membership and eCommerce plugins.

The integration list includes Easy Digital Downloads, WooCommerce, Magic Members, S2members, Paid Memberships Pro, etc. Most of these integrations are available as free addon plugins.

WPCourseware Integrations

We hope this article helped you add a learning management system in WordPress using WP Courseware. You may also want to see our guide on how to create a questions and answers site in WordPress.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

15 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

    Hey WPBeginner readers,
    Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner?
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  2. Samuel says

    Using Courseware looks better over Sensei in terms of compatibility.
    My question is regarding WooCommerce. Do I really have to use Woo Commerce if Paypal is not available in my country? Can I use alternatives like Expresspayment instead of WooCommerce? Is Express Payment a reliable option?
    Your help is appreciated, in advance.
    Samuel

    • WPBeginner Support says

      We have not tested Express Payment at the moment, you can test it if you would prefer that over WooCommerce.

      Admin

  3. Mike says

    Does this LMS plugin allow for uploading SCORM packages, rather then building courses natively? What kind of stats tracking does it have?

  4. Nicky says

    Thank you so much!!!! I have been going round & round in circles trying to work out how to get my course to show up on the front end of my wp site! Nothing in the WP Courseware info made this clear!

  5. morgan says

    Hi Syed Balkhi and team,
    Thanks so much for writing this post. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get my course to show up on the front end. I’m sure it’s obvious to most, but I needed this article to help me figure it out. Thanks so much for the guidance.

  6. Joanne says

    I’m building a website for online courses and webinars. I want to be able to record webinars and re-sell the as ever-greens, have on-line programs, memberships and tracking, sell retreats to real locations and sell books/meditations/products.
    I bought the Flatsome shop theme with WooCommerce but am I better to switch to WP Courseware (or something else)? (didn’t know it existed)

  7. Desheen says

    I am confused between courseware and learnpress? wondering if there is someone that can help me set-up my LMS? I tried hiring a freelancer, but they do not seem to understand my needs and functionality is important.

  8. Ifeanyi says

    i want to comment on those guy HOSTGATOR!!! i try to register with them… uptill now, i unable to have the package i applyed for. they keep on asking me to send my criedit card details to them.
    please advise me on what to do

  9. Wiliam says

    Thanks for the nice walkthrough of WP Courseware. I appreciate the time you guys spend on these step by step articles.

    One question, near the end of the article you have a graphic showing the User’s area, and you have a round closeup on the graphic. May I ask how you did that? That’s a very nice feature.

    Thanks!

  10. Andrew Randazzo says

    Very interesting. How do you think it compares with Sensei (a WooThemes add-on plugin)? That’s what I currently use and on face value, they appear to do/function the same.

    • Debbie says

      I’ve used WP Courseware and Sensei.

      WP Courseware is likely to be much more compatible with your chosen theme. Sensei often creates layout issues (sidebars shifting to the bottom of the page, for example).

      WP Courseware gets the job done and is fairly easy to figure out. Personally, I think the WP Courseware user interface could do with a bit of a facelift (flat images instead of the gradients). Sensei looks clean and follows your theme’s design.

      Sensei includes an area for a promo video (YouTube or Vimeo) for your course, which is great for marketing. Although technically you could do the same with Courseware if you use shortcodes.

      Currently WooThemes support is disappointing (1 week+), so be prepared if you get stuck. The folks at FlyPlugins do respond eventually, but the answers can be pretty vague at times and may take several rounds of back ‘n forth emails.

      Both work easily with WooCommerce.

      My choice for now is WP Courseware over Sensei primarily because of theme compatibility and the fact that it works…no matter what. But honestly, because I already own several wootheme extensions, I really would prefer to use Sensei but it would require fooling around with theme coding or switching themes altogether.

      • Donna Peplinskie says

        > Sensei often creates layout issues (sidebars shifting to the bottom of the page, for example).

        I wanted to drop a quick note to say that, as of version 1.12.2, Sensei has added theme compatibility support and now works with any standard WordPress theme.

        Cheers!

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