Learning Management System with WordPress

Let us begin this article by understanding WordPress and how does it work.

In simple words, WordPress is software anyone can use to create their own website, blog, applications etc. WordPress was released in 2003. WordPress has developed into highly malleable “Content Management System”. And today it controls more than 27% of the entire web.

This is world’s most popular Content Management System. CMS is capable to handle 3 parameters of e-learning: Content Management, Content Presentation, and Content Delivery.

How does WordPress work?

To start WordPress, You will have to download the software, install it on a web server, connect it to the database and start publishing the content on the web.

This entire process will only take 5 minutes. Once the software is installed, it allows user to web-based editor to publish the content to build a website.

We need to have plugins for Learning Management System. LearnPress is a comprehensive WordPress plugin. It is one of the best plugin which can be used to create and sell courses online. Each course can be prepared with chapters & quizzes and can be managed with easy to use interface.

With the help of this WordPress LMS plugin, one can quickly create online education schools, online tutorials websites and the good part is there is no coding required.

These plugins are free but it has premium high quality WordPress plugin by which users can make money from WordPress based LMS.

Let us look at the features of these plugins in WordPress based LMS.

1. There are many themes available in plugins so user can work with any WordPress themes.
2. It provides an excellent interface for users. Users can create courses in the WordPress, teacher profiles, extended user profiles, quiz system, tracking course progress etc.
3. It lets you to manage the courses. With the course user will create user can share, manage and can watch the statistics about number of student on the dashboard.
4. Then there is a support facility in WordPress LMS, it will communicate with students and instructors.
5. It provides a bunch of add-ons. Add-ons are nothing but extra features.
6. WordPress LMS plugin provide instant feedback so students can identify what their progress and what more they want to improve themselves.
7. It offers the grading system which is one of the best ways to show students’ progress.
8. It also offers certifications once to students who have successfully completed their courses.

Advantages of WordPress

1. WordPress is spread under an Open Source license – which means user can download and use the WordPress software however they like without spending a single penny. But it also means that hundreds of users all around the world are constantly creating and improving the WordPress software.
2. WordPress is easy to understand and use — Rather than hiring a web designer whenever you want to make a small change to your website, you can easily manage and update the your content by yourself using basic formatting tools which everyone is familiar with who knows about WordPress even if not it is very easy to understand.
3. WordPress is entirely customizable — there are thousands of themes and plugins present that enable you to easily change the complete look and feel of your website, or even add new features to your website with just a few clicks.
4. If user face problems or user wants to add features, it is easy to find support or appoint someone for help. Moreover, to the WordPress tutorials on this site, there are also thousands of WordPress developers and designers who are available to help. The official WordPress Forum is a THE place to get answers to your questions. Every year, there are thousands of local WordPress events happening all over the world where one can meet and have a chat with fellow WordPress users.
5. After reading this article, now we know that user can control their content. There are some publishing platforms which restrict user to customize their own website. And, user is locked in to that service; if it should ever shut down, users’ content will vanish. However in WordPress, user can import their data from other platforms like Blogger or Tumblr, and user can easily export their data to move away from WordPress.

There are certain disadvantages as well for using a WordPress. Let us look at the disadvantages.

1. One of the biggest disadvantages of WordPress is its security. As we know it is an open source platform and also it is highly dependent on plugins and themes customization. As both of the things are added by different person and there is no monitoring to such additions so anyone can add code lines which contains bugs.
2. WordPress is free but there are significant costs. As it relies in plugins and customizations they are also free but mostly those are not reliable and safe. Moreover, if you want you want more visitors to visit your website, you have to buy a theme, as the free one is worn-out.
3. As I mentioned in the article that installing WordPress is a 5 minutes task but it needs frequent updates which can be very frustrating at sometimes. The more plugins you use, the more likely it is for you to face compatibility problems.
4. WordPress is SEO friendly platform. However for the people who have no knowledge about SEO, it can create few problems for them. The most common problem is WordPress has category and tagging system so if content is tagged or marked into categories, Google will declare it as a duplicate content.

Conclusion

I hope this article helped you to understand the various offerings that are provided when building a learning management system with WordPress. We have talked about Pros and Cons of WordPress.

It does not matter which plugin you choose, WordPress is the best platform to run an effective learning management system as it is designed to make it easy and also it is easy to manage for the users.