Create Your Own Online Music Course Using LifterLMS

Create Your Own Online Music Course Using LifterLMS

Apr 15, 2020 | e-Learning, LifterLMS, WordPress, WordPress Plugins | 0 comments

🛎️Don’t forget to take a look at our other LifterLMS tutorial on teaching yoga online .🛎️

Mastery of a musical instrument is a skill coveted by most. Guitar, piano, violin and other instrument players sell their knowledge and expertise on a daily basis through music lessons. Decades ago musical lessons were imparted privately at homes or at academies, limiting the amount of work. Nowadays, musical experts can teach their skills from anywhere in the world through an online learning website. Teaching music using e-learning platforms like LifterLMS will allow you to do what you love and build an automated stream of income. To find out more about how to build our online music course, check out today’s blog post.


How To Build An Online Course With LifterLMS

Step 1: Design a Teaching Plan

The first step you should follow to create your online music course is come up with a plan. This will require defining the instrument, type of lessons and ideal audience for your course. Based on this information you can create specific lessons to best serve your students. Some ideas to consider involve beginners violin for children, multi-level classical piano, or intermediate rock guitar.

This data will guide you to select your course website’s design, content ideas and best marketing strategies.


Step 2: Create Lessons and Instructional Material

Before creating your online course website, you need to create an extensive educational content base. You can use a wide variety of creative media to instruct your students. Video lessons are especially helpful and a pillar in most online courses. Educational text and sheet music are also helpful. To increase the engagement you can also create live tutoring events.


Step 3: Set Up Evaluation Methods

It is important that you figure out a way to assess your students’ knowledge. To do this you can create online quizzes with a variety of questions. You can also ask students to submit their own videos playing music pieces for critique.


Step 4: Set Up Your Website on LifterLMS

Create LifterLMS Courses

To create a course please follow these steps:

  • Navigate to the WP Dashboard > LifterLMS > Add Course. 
  • You can then add/edit its title, description, and edit the settings
  • Publish/Update the post.

Create LifterLMS Lessons 

To create a lesson please follow these steps:

  • Navigate to the WP Dashboard > LifterLMS > Course > Lesson > Add Lesson. 
  • You can then add/edit its title, description, and edit the settings.
  • Publish/Update the post.

Embed the Instructional Videos in the LifterLMS Lessons

To embed the instructional videos in the lesson please follow these steps:

  •  Navigate to the WP Dashboard > LifterLMS > Course > Lesson > Lesson Edit page. 
  • Scroll down to the Lesson Settings.
  • Enter the video URL in the Video Embed Url field. For a full list of supported providers please see the WordPress oEmbeds.
  • Publish/Update the post.

Add Live Virtual Meetings (Live Streaming)

A virtual classroom/meeting is a digital replica of a traditional classroom or training room. The instructors teach, and the students learn in real-time, face-to-face but via internet-enabled technology devices.

Virtual classes have given students access to a wealth of best musicians and artists from the world. You can add a live virtual meeting, classroom in your LifterLMS course you can use live virtual meeting third-party tools like Zoom, Go to Meeting and Go to Webinar. But using the Google Hangouts and YouTube Lives you can embed live section on your LifterLMS website. You can easily embed the live video by following the same steps explained above.

Please check out this LifterLMS article for “How do I add a live virtual meeting, classroom, or webinar to my LifterLMS course or membership?” also.

Create Course Difficulties

In the LifterLMS, course difficulties will help your students to choose the course according to their learning level. You can create new difficulty and select the desired difficulty for the course by following these steps::

  •  Navigate to the WP Dashboard > LifterLMS > Course > Difficulties. 
  • Add Name and Description.
  • Click Add New Course Difficulty. 
  • Navigate to the desired course edit page.
  • From the right sidebar select Difficulties under Document.
  • Enter the desired Difficulty name in the Difficulties field.
  • Publish/Update the post.

Create Quizzes 

To create a quiz in a LifterLMS course, please follow these steps:

  • Navigate to the WP Dashboard > LifterLMS > Course.
  • Hover over the title of the desired course and click the Builder link from the displayed actions list. The LifterLMS Course Builder will be launched.
  • Click the quiz icon (question mark) under the desired lesson to add the quiz to your lesson. This will open a new popup where you can select the Create New Quiz.
  • Add quiz title, quiz description, passing percentage, limit attempts and time limit.
  • Add questions to your quiz by clicking on the Add Question button. 
  • Enable the Published option from the top of the pop-up.
  • Exit.

Create Memberships Levels to Manage Users

You can set multiple memberships in LifterLMS to manage your users/students. To create membership please follow these steps:

  • Navigate to the WP Dashboard > Memberships > Add Membership.
  • Enter the title and description.
  • From the Membership Setting section, select Sale Page, edit restriction setting as per need and add courses for this membership. Once the user purchases this membership, he/she will be enrolled in the selected course automatically.
  • Add the access plan for this membership.
  • Add a featured image from the Featured image meta-box.
  • Publish the post.

Boost User Engagement (Using the BadgeOS LifterLMS Integration add-on)

LifterLMS has a great in-built feature for gamification and engaging your students. You can award certificates to the user on performing a specific event such as scoring 60% in a quiz, completing a lesson or completing a course, etc.

Moreover, you can use the  LifterLMS BadgeOS Integration add-on to help the users to keep excited and engaged with the LMS activities. There are many triggers (such as quiz completed, minimum % grade on a quiz, the student completes a section, etc) provided by the LifterLMS BadgeOS Integration to award badges, points, and ranks to boost the user engagement with your course.

Check out this blog post on “How to Make Your E-Learning Course Interesting”

You can also take help from this guide “How to Build an Online Course Website with LifterLMS from Scratch” to create a training site using the LifterLMS.

In Conclusion



Would you like to teach your musical skills to students all around the world? By following the steps above you can create your own online music course using LifterLMS. Don’t forget to share this post if you found the information helpful. Need further assistance setting up your course? Feel free to contact us for help.

How To Teach Yoga Online With LifterLMS

How To Teach Yoga Online With LifterLMS

Apr 15, 2020 | e-Learning, LifterLMS | 0 comments

🛎️ Make sure to check out our companion post on how to teach music online with LifterLMS.🛎️

Would you like to grow your income and sense of freedom? It might sound too good to be true, but becoming an online teacher can allow you to do both. As a yoga instructor, your earnings are heavily constricted by the number of clients you can take on a daily basis. Online courses, on the other hand, allow you to instruct an infinite amount of yoga students every day. Starting your own online yoga learning website might seem challenging but tools such as LifterLMS allow you to build and manage your course efficiently.


Start  Teaching Yoga Online With Lifter LMS

Define Your Audience

Before you start designing your online learning website and course content you first have to define what and who you want to teach. Yoga has a large following worldwide and you have to determine what segment of that audience you want to tailor your course to. You can create a yoga course tailored to beginners, intermediate or advanced levels or target specific age groups. Offering a course that suits the needs of a specific niche will help you stand out among the competition.

Create Content 

Once you have defined who your ideal course audience is, you can create educational content that targets that specific group of people. This can include all kinds of media. Video yoga classes are a major component of most online yoga courses. You can also create written guides that include illustrative drawings or images. Finally, live streaming yoga lessons is also essential to interact one on one with your new students.

Organize Content 

Part of preparing your course content involves organizing it in a way that is most useful to your students. For better results, you can organize your video or text lessons by order of difficulty. You can create separate courses for different yoga types or for different levels of difficulty. Another alternative is to create class series, separate classes by time length or themes.


Use LifterLMS to Display and Manage Your Content and Users

Use the Astra theme with the Yoga Site Template:

Astra is a functional WordPress theme that offers Yoga Site templates to help you attractively display your LifterLMS yoga course.You can easily set up these theme by following the steps below:

  • Navigate to Appearance > Themes from your WordPress dashboard.
  • Click Add New.
  • Search Astra in the search box.
  • Hover on the Astra box and click Install.
  • Click Activate once the theme is installed.

  • Navigate to Plugins > Add New.
  • Search Astra Starter Sites.
  • Click Install Now.
  • Click Activate once the plugin is installed.

Follow these steps to import the Yoga Instructor template:

  • Navigate to Appearance > Astra Starter Sites.
  • Select the Page Builder. (Elementor recommended)
  • Search Yoga.
  • Select the template Yoga.
  • Click Import Site.

Create LifterLMS Courses:

To add your instructional yoga content to your website and make it accessible to your students, you will first have to create your own courses. Courses will help you organize your e-learning content and help your students find it with ease To create a course please follow these steps:

  • Navigate to the WP Dashboard > LifterLMS > Add Course. 
  • You can then add/edit its title, description, and edit the settings
  • Publish/Update the post.

Create LifterLMS Lessons:

Once you have set up your courses you can move forward to create your yoga lessons within each of your courses.To create a lesson please follow these steps:

  • Navigate to the WP Dashboard > LifterLMS > Course > Lesson > Add Lesson. 
  • You can then add/edit its title, description, and edit the settings.
  • Publish/Update the post.

Embed the Instructional Yoga Instructional Videos in the LifterLMS Lessons:

Most yoga lessons include content in video format. Instructional videos are some of the most beneficial tools for yogi istudents. With LMS adding To embed the instructional videos in the to your lessons can be done in 4 simple steps. please follow these steps:

 Navigate to the WP Dashboard > LifterLMS > Course > Lesson > Lesson Edit page. 

  • Navigate to the WP Dashboard > LifterLMS > Course > Lesson > Lesson Edit page. 
  • Scroll down to the Lesson Settings.
  • Enter the video URL in the Video Embed Url field. For a full list of supported providers please see the WordPress oEmbeds.
  • Publish/Update the post.

Add Live Virtual Meetings (Live Streaming).

Live streaming is a great tool you can use to improve your online yoga course. Through live-streaming, you can host live yoga class events or workshops in which you interact with your students to resolve problems. Live classes are the ideal way to work with your students one-on-one and help them correct their postures and form. To add a live virtual meeting, classroom in your LifterLMS course you can use live virtual meeting third-party tools like Zoom, Go to Meeting and Go to Webinar.You can also use Google Hangouts, YouTube Live, or Facebook Live .also

You can A great way to make use of these tools is by embeding the Google Hangouts and YouTube Lives on your LifterLMS website. It’s mean This way the user/viewer can watch your the live section events or classes right on your site, with no other sign in/sign up required. You can easily embed the live video by following the same steps explained above.

Please For a more comprehensive guide, check out this LifterLMS article for “How do I add a live virtual meeting, classroom, or webinar to my LifterLMS course or membership?” also.

Create Memberships Levels to Manage Users:

Different membership levels can be used to customize content access and better adapt to your members’ needs and wants.  You can set multiple memberships in LifterLMS to manage your users/students. To create membership please follow these steps:

  • Navigate to the WP Dashboard > Memberships > Add Membership.
  • Enter the title and description.
  • From the Membership Setting section, select Sale Page, edit restriction setting as per need and add courses for this membership. Once the user purchases this membership, he/she will be enrolled in the selected course automatically.
  • Add the access plan for this membership.
  • Add a featured image from the Featured image meta-box.
  • Publish the post.

You can also take help from this guide “How to Build an Online Course Website with LifterLMS from Scratch” to create a training site using the LifterLMS.

In Conclusion

Creating a successful online yoga course is possible with a smart game plan and access to the right tools. LifterLMS is a great asset that will allow you to display all your best educational content to yoga students all over the world. If you need more help to create your own online course on LifterLMS feel free to contact our ninjas. 

Top 5 LearnDash Reporting and Grading Add-ons

Top 5 LearnDash Reporting and Grading Add-ons

Dec 13, 2019 | e-Learning, Learning Management System | 0 comments

Our clients are always asking us for recommendations on how to enhance the reporting and grading features on their LearnDash websites. There are several LearnDash extensions available that enhance the reporting and grading feature of this LMS plugin. In this article, we will give you an in-depth analysis of the top five LearnDash Reporting and Grading add-ons. 

1. LearnDash ProPanel

LearnDash ProPanel add-on enhances your LearnDash administrator experience by combining comprehensive reporting and assignment management, enabling you to send course explicit correspondences, and showing the ongoing progress of your LearnDash courses.

This addon provides you the ability to view the real-time activity of your student as soon as he/she enrolled in the courses. Using this add-on you have full control to manage all the uploaded assignments and essays. Moreover, you can view and download user course progress and the quiz results.

Features:

Let’s take a look at some of the main features:

ProPanel Overview – The LearnDash ProPanel add-on adds a section for an overview reporting where you can view the total students, the number of courses, assignments pending and essays pending.

ProPanel Reporting – This section helps you to filter the users and courses data so you can get the desired result only.

Plus this section allows you to email a selected group of students. For example, you can email anyone who has not yet completed the specific course.

Activity Stream – The Activity Stream section shows the ongoing action of students’ interactions with your courses. Once a student completed his/her course, lesson, topic, or quiz the information will be shown here. 

Progress Chart  –  Using ProPanel’s Progress Chart section the LMS administrator can view how many students haven’t started the course yet, how many numbers of students are in progress and how many of them have completed the course.

Plus here you can also view the in-progress chart, showing how many students completed the course less than 20 percent, 60 percent or 100 percent. 

LearnDash Propanel

2. LearnDash Gradebook

LearnDash Gradebook is a robust add-on. Whether you are using LearnDash in a conventional classroom or have a blended learning program.

It allows you to track your students’ online progress and manage their progress all from a centralized location, without jumping between different screens. 

This addon is not only just integration with LearnDash. It also provides a lot of flexibility in how you report and manage students’ performance. 

Features:

Let’s discuss some of the main features.

Front-End Report Card – With Front-End Report Card feature you can share student’s grades privately. They can simply log in and will be able to see their grades for all courses, quizzes, and assignments.

Automatically Synced with LearnDash – This awesome feature automatically fetches grades from your LearnDash based quizzes and assignments.

Manual Grade Entry – Administer grades for non-LearnDash items, such as projects, classroom participation, and reading assignments. If these activities need a grade, it can be added to the grade book.

Weighted Grades – Just select the weighted grade option to weight a grade. 

Custom Grading Scale – This feature allows you to customize your grading scale according to your needs, for e.g. what creates an “A” versus an “A-” or a “B+”, or choose to not use letter grades at all.

LearnDash Gradebook

3. Tin Canny LearnDash Reporting

The Tin Canny LearnDash Reporting plugin adds detail reporting on LearnDash for administrators and Group Leaders. The best thing about the plugin is that it helps you track the progress and completion of Articulate Storyline/Rise, Adobe Captivate, and iSpring modules published to Tin Can or SCORM, as well as H5P content.

Features:

Let’s discuss some of the main features below:

Mark Complete – This feature gives you an option to Control the Mark Complete button behavior of LearnDash based on activity inside uploaded modules.

Dashboard Report – With this feature, you can see Tin Can SCORM statement and LearnDash course completion at a glance.

Course Reports – You can monitor learner and course activity with this feature. Course reports can also be shown on the frontend simply by a shortcode.

Detailed Drill Down User Reports – This feature allows you to drill down to review LearnDash, Tin Can and SCORM activity by the individual user.

Drill Down Course Report – With this feature, when you click on the course, it will give you more details of the course including a list of enrolled users and overall performance data. 

4. User Insight For LearnDash

User Insight for LearnDash is a user management add-on that puts your students’ data at a single place with a beautiful interface. Users Insights for LearnDash adds a module to examine the overall statistics about the student’s activity for courses, lessons, and quizzes. It gives you reports, such as how many courses each student has completed or how many quizzes they have attempted and much more…

Features:

Let’s discuss its main features:

Active Students Report – The active students’ report tells what number of students are active over time. Student activity is charted on a time scale.

Course Enrolments Report – The Course enrolments report can show you how many courses have been started by the students’ overtime. 

Top Courses Report – The top courses report shows a chart of the well-liked courses based on the number of students enrolled in the courses.

Top Groups Report – The top groups’ report is used for finding the most popular groups based on the number of students.

Quiz Attempts Report  – It shows the number of attempts a student had to pass a quiz. 

Quiz Score Report  – In this report, a range chart shows the scores of the quiz attempts. You can see how your students score on the quizzes.

Advanced LearnDash User Filters – Here you can apply a number of filters to search for the desired result.

5. Frontend scores and reports

The Frontend scores and reports add-on combines with LearnDash to automate scoring and allows Course Administrators to show user scores. You can provide advanced scoring and feedback with their courses and online learning websites, give suggestions for additional courses and live sessions, make recommendations for additional courses and live sessions.

Its main features include assessment and quiz reports, assessment reports, recommendation reports, overall score, and GPA report. These features are discussed below in detail.

Features:

Let’s discuss some of the main features below:

Assessment and Quiz Reports: It brings many features for Assessment and Quiz Reporting which includes, Time Completion Reports, Quiz Score Comparison Reports, Learning Objective Comparison Report, Track all Quiz Scores within a course, Overall Score by Learning Objective and Rubric Based Scoring for Quiz Essay Questions.

Assignment Reports – In Assignment reports it provides, Advanced Scoring, Skill Scores,  Frontend Assignment Grades and Feedback, Assignment Feedback and Peer Reviews.

Recommendation Reports – In Recommendation Reports, this add-on provides, Recommended Courses, Recommended Live Sessions and Filters. 

Overall Score and GPA Report  – In this feature, the add-on provides an average score from all course grades within a category to calculate a GPA, Weighted Scoring for Quizzes, Assignments and Final Exams. It also provides Transcripts for the students.

LearnDash Reports are a very important tool to track your students’ performance. By tracking learner progress you will know what’s missing in your course content and how you can fix it to improve your eLearning success.

If you need any assistance with the LearnDash, don’t hesitate to drop us a line here or through our contact form and one of our Ninjas will be in touch ASAP.

xAPI Support in LifterLMS

xAPI Support in LifterLMS

Nov 12, 2019 | e-Learning, LifterLMS | 0 comments

In this article, we discuss xAPI, LRS, the difference between xAPI and SCORM and the benefits of xAPI for your LMS. 

In the world of online learning, SCORM has been recognized as the universal language. SCORM has been considered standard for online courses for a very long time. A major issue, however, is that it doesn’t record most of your online learning experiences. The experiences of a user are incomparably wider and deeper than the collection of a browser session. This is exactly what the creators of SCORM sought to correct. 

Recognizing the importance of universal language like SCORM, while still working to incorporate the various ways you learn-they have developed the Experience API, also known as xAPI (formerly known as Tin Can API).

What Is xAPI

API stands for Application Program Interface. This allows devices to speak to each other. Various software programs, gadgets and really anything digital can listen to or talk-with an API. 

xAPI is a way of collecting data about experiences offline and online. Its can track activities across events, system, and interaction in a standard data format-this makes it more powerful. Coupled with variety in analysis, design and technology practices.

There are numerous APIs available in the world and your organization will use lots of them. The xAPI is developed upon common API formats. It stretches the functionality and let us talk of things we do in learning for e.g. understanding who was a learner’s instructor or asking for evaluation results. It depicts the future language of the online learning industry, developed for learning people by learning people. 

People communicate and learn in many ways. They learn from interaction with other people, content and beyond. The xAPI details a set of techniques for communicating the activity of a user to a database, known as the Learning Record Store (LRS).  

LifterLMS xAPI lets you integrate LifterLMS with Experience API. It allows you to manage your h5P content, LifterLMS activities, and competencies.

How to Use xAPI in LifterLMS

You can integrate your LifterLMS powered WordPress website with xAPI by installing LifterLMS xAPI addon. It allows you to manage your h5P content, manage your LifterLMS activities and competencies. 

To install LifterLMS xAPI Plugin follow these simple steps:

  • Download the LifterLMS xAPI addon. 
  • Navigate to WordPress Dashboard
  • Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin > Choose File
  • Locate and select LifterLMS xAPI zip file, then click the Open button
  • Click the Install Now button to install the plugin.
  • After installation, click the Activate Plugin link

LifterLMS xAPI comes pre-configured for use with the LifterLMS LRS demo system. It is a public LRS, where all administrators can see the details. Hence, it is recommended to use this only for test purposes. To change your LRS Settings, follow these steps

  • Go to LifterLMS
  • Select LifterLMS xAPI
  • Click on LRS Settings, a new LRS Settings page will open
  • Click the Update button
  • Change the information in the fields with the information provided after you subscribe to the service. 

What Is the Difference Between SCORM and xAPI?

SCORM was a standard of online learning for a very long time. But, it comes up with some limitations-your students can learn only within your LMS, and students or users cannot use SCORM content if not logged into the LMS. Students cannot learn offline or record if they have found any solution on any website.

SCORM need a local database in your LMS to store learning record, and you are permitted to report on a fraction of that data-not entirely. The main challenge in SCORM was reporting and the prime reason of xAPI development. 

When it comes to collecting reporting data SCORM provides limited functionalities-xAPI is the other way around. With xAPI you can send as little or a much reporting data to LRS as you want. If you have collected large quantities of data and it has to reside in your local WordPress database, it could possibly push your server to the edge of total collapse.

LifterLMS xAPI assures your WordPress site stays light and quick. It doesn’t interfere with your LifterLMS database with xAPI learning records. LifterLMS has eliminated any custom hosting requirements by adopting an external LRS database and reporting service. Now you can keep hosting LifterLMS in a standard hosting account. 

According to Experience API, there are numerous differences between SCORM and xAPI, we have made a table for you that sums it up pretty well. 

 

Features

SCORM

xAPI
Track Completion 

Y

Y
Track Time

Y

 Y
Track Pass/Fail Y Y
Report a single score Y Y
Report Multiple Scores N Y
Detailed test results N Y
Games and Simulations N Y
Detailed Test Results N Y
Solid Security N Y
No LMS required N Y
No internet browser required N Y
Complete control over your content N Y
No cross-domain limitation N Y
Mobile apps for learning N Y
Platform transition  N Y
Track Serious games N Y
Track Simulations N Y
Track Informal Learning N Y
Track Real-world Performance N Y
Track Offline Learning N Y
Track Adaptive Learning N Y
Track Interactive Learning N Y
Track Blended Learning N Y
Track Long-term Learning N Y
Track Team-based Learning N Y

 

Benefits of Using xAPI

xAPI has opened up an entirely new world of possibilities in an e-learning world.  With xAPI, you can understand learning behavior and the effectiveness of learning experiences much better.

As xAPI is a more recent development, it is less prone to error as SCORM. Another great benefit of xAPI is the breadth and depth of learning activities it tracks This makes it more suitable for the current world where learning happens everywhere. Moreover, it lets you generate reports with more reliable, richer and more human-readable data. 

With LifterLMS, LifterLMS xAPI lets you report to any LRS from any of the following content types

  • LifterLMS quiz questions, quizzes, lessons, and courses.
  • Uploaded eLearning courses created with authoring tools.
  • Linked courses, content and web pages available anywhere online can be used or reselled. 
  • H5P content that gives a completion status, h5p content for video communication and tracking videos.
  • Vimeo and YouTube embedded video URLs in lessons.
  • Integration of LifterLMS and Zapier services via LRS service. 
  • Create your own custom competencies-assign them to any xAPI or any course, lesson and quiz.
  • Create your reports, and visualize your reporting data in your LRS.
  • Make your LRS reporting data more understandable for humans.
  • Export your reports from LRS.
  • For any LifterLMS course, lesson quiz or any linked-learning course it lets you turn on or off reporting for each of them. 

xAPI is a universal learning language that describes your or your students learning experiences. Those experiences can be understood with the depth of understanding that is unimaginable with SCORM. However, it would need to be used properly with discipline and planning to make it effective and more useful. We hope this article will help you in understanding xAPI and its benefits. 

We’d love to hear if you found this article useful. Please comment below with your thoughts so we can continue to create helpful posts. If you need any assistance with the LifterLMS, don’t hesitate to drop us a line here or through our contact form and one of our Ninjas will be in touch asap.

Restrict LMS Content for Members Only Using LifterLMS Memberships

Restrict LMS Content for Members Only Using LifterLMS Memberships

Oct 16, 2019 | e-Learning, Learning Management System, LifterLMS | 0 comments

In this article, we show you how you can restrict your LMS content using only LifterLMS Membership. We walk you through different options and features available for your LifterLMS-powered website.

Courses and Memberships

Courses are the main element of LifterLMS, and LifterLMS Memberships allows course creators and administrators to organize their online content and courses into groups.

Courses are comprised of quizzes and lessons. These courses and lessons are sorted within that course in Sections. However, memberships may be comprised of pages, lessons, and courses. Membership is not required to sell a course – both courses and memberships can be sold exclusively.

Membership Catalog Page

In LifterLMS a list of all the published membership are made available on the Membership Catalog Page. Your Membership Catalog Page can be any of the WordPress pages.

That noted, be careful while selecting your membership page and make sure that the particular page is not configured for the other three primary LifterLMS pages. The content added in that page would not be displayed on your Membership Catalog page, as LifterLMS will have taken over this page. 

You may customize the number of courses in the course catalog, and the number of courses listed on each page, and you may update those settings for the Membership Catalog.

To customize the Membership Catalog Page setting Go to LifterLMS > Settings then scroll to Membership Catalog Settings.

Membership Restrictions

Associate Membership to a Course

In LifterLMS you can associate membership to a course. When a user purchases that specific membership, they will be automatically enrolled in the associated course. To associate membership to a course, follow these steps:

  • Go to Memberships
  • Select the Membership you want to associate with the course
  • Scroll to Membership Settings
  • Select Auto Enrollment
  • Select the course under Add Course Option to associate the Membership with the selected course

Now users will be automatically enrolled to that specific course when they purchase this membership.

Restrict Course to Members Only

In certain conditions, it is useful to restrict your course content to a membership level. In LifterLMS you can easily make your courses specific for a particular group of students. To offer courses to a specific group of student:

  • Go to Access Plans under Course Options
  • Under Plan Availability option Select Members Only
  • Under Membership Select a Membership you want to associate with that course

This ensures the course is only available to those users who have purchased a given membership.

Recurring Monthly Membership with Course

With LifterLMS you can create recurring monthly memberships with courses by following these simple and easy steps. Once you have created your courses and memberships, to set recurring memberships you must create an access plan.

To create an access plan:

  • Go to Memberships
  • Scroll to Memberships Settings
  • Under Access Plans click on Add New
  • In Access Plan under Frequency, Select the frequency for course
  • Under Plan Period, Select how long you want that course to be available, year, month, week or a day.

Under Plan Length, Select Plan Length of the course from all time to 1-6 years.

You can create a monthly pricing access plan for your memberships, allowing you to create both recurring and one-time payment plans with expirations. Pricing by membership can also be created, and you may design up to six access plans for each membership and course.

By adding a members-only access plan to each course included in a given membership, you will allow a user to browse and discover specific courses included in membership they can purchase.

Restrict Pages and Blog Posts

LifterLMS allows you to restrict page and posts to users with certain memberships. You can easily do this while creating a post or page, via the meta box settings available on the right side.

Create Member-Only Forums

You can also create members-only forums on your LifterLMS-powered website. To access this feature you must install and activate bbPress. Once you’ve done so, go to LifterLMS > Settings > Integrations. Select bbPress, then check the Enable/Disable checkbox. Like courses and posts, you can restrict specific forums to one or more membership level.

Once you have enabled bbPress:

  • Go to Forums
  • Navigate to Membership Access box on the right side
  • Check Restrict This Forum
  • Under Membership select a Membership. Users must belong to that membership to access that forum

Locking the Website to Specific Membership Level

LifterLMS allows you to lock your site to a specific membership level. For these settings navigate to LifterLMS > Settings > Memberships.

Pages That ByPass Sitewide Restrictions

After locking down your website to a membership level, the following pages will be displayed to non-enrolled members or public visitors. You can also add custom pages of your choice to this list by using this filter  lifterlms_sitewide_restriction_bypass_ids”:

  • The unenrolled view of the membership page (a sales page)
  • The terms and conditions page if you are using one
  • The checkout screen
  • The membership catalog
  • The course catalog

You can also redirect a non-member to another page whenever a non-member tries to access member-only content. To customize these settings, navigate to Restrictions under Membership Settings.

This has been our take on how to restrict LMS content by using only LifterLMS Membership. We hope you have found this article useful. Best of luck with your LMS and memberships.

How to Build an Online Course Website with LifterLMS from Scratch

How to Build an Online Course Website with LifterLMS from Scratch

Aug 8, 2019 | e-Learning, Learning Management System, LifterLMS | 0 comments

Are you looking for a quick and simple way to build an online course website based on WordPress? This article is for you.

There are many free and paid WordPress LMS (Learning Management System) plugins you can look for, which offer great help in building online courses with multiple features such as managing courses, creating lessons and quizzes and accepting payments, etc.

Among these, LifterLMS is one of the most powerful and popular LMS plugins. It also has a free version so you would not have to invest too much when you are just getting started. It is built in a very scalable way.

In this guide, we will show you how to easily create an online course website in WordPress with LifterLMS. 

Here are the steps we will cover to help you create an online course website in WordPress by using the free version of LifterLMS:

  1. Installing & Configuring LifterLMS.
  2. Creating Your First Course.
  3. Creating Your First Lesson.
  4. Using the Course Builder.
  5. Add a Quiz.
  6. Create a Certificate and Achievements.
  7. Memberships.
  8. Sidebar Widgets.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

Step 1: Installing and Configuring LifterLMS

LifterLMS is available in the WordPress plugin repo, so simply navigate to WP Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and search for it, install and activate it.

New LifterLMS menu will be added at WP Dashboard.

First of all, you have to create these necessary pages:

  • Course Catalog:

This page is where your visitors will find a list of all your available courses. Create a new page and use the [lifterlms_courses] shortcode to output the catalog content.

  • Memberships Catalog:

This page is where your visitors will find a list of all your available memberships. Create a new page and use the [lifterlms_memberships]  shortcode.

  • Student Dashboard Page:

The page where students can view and manage their current enrollments, earned certificates and achievements, account information, and purchase history. This page is extremely dynamic and outputs content for many uses. You must add the shortcode [lifterlms_my_account] to the content of this page. 

When a logged-out user visits the Student Dashboard page, they will see a login form and, if Open Registration is enabled, they will also see the registration form.

After logging in, the user will see their dashboard.

  • Checkout Page:

Page used for displaying the checkout form. Create a new page and add the shortcode [lifterlms_checkout].

After creating these necessary pages, you have to select them into the LifterLMS Settings. To do so, you have to navigate to LifterLMS > Settings from your WP Dashboard.

Now visit each setting tabs and select these pages accordingly. Save the changes.

Note: You have to add these newly created pages in the main menu.

Step 2: Creating Your First Course

LifterLMS Plugin provides an excellent user interface to create a course with the options you need. You can find it easy to make a full curriculum layout as well as edit and maintain it. 

To create a course, go to the Dashboard > LifterLMS > Add Course. You can then add/edit its title, description, and edit the settings easily.

  • Course Options Section:

From the Course Options section, you can edit the course settings such as Sale Page (Page for visitors and students who are not enrolled in the course), Course Difficulty Category, Featured Video/Audio, Restrictions (i.e Course Prerequisite)

 

Access Plan Section:

The next section is the Access Plan, here you can set up the access plans such as Free, One-Time, and Recurring Payments. You can also add the Plan Description here plus you can also select the Checkout Redirect Page.

 

Instructor Section:

From the Instructor section, you can edit the current course instructor plus you can also add multiple instructors as well. This is a very cool feature provided by the LifterLMS team in the free version of the LifterLMS plugin.

 

Student Management Section:

Here you can manage the existing enrollments. You can also enroll a new student manually here.

 

Featured Image:

If you want to add a featured image instead of featured audio/video, use featured image meta-box (on the right side of the edit/add course page).

Publish the course.

 

Step 3: Creating Your First Lesson

Now that you have created your first course. It’s time to create lessons for the course. LifterLMS allows you to create highly interactive lessons and then add them to your online course.

To create a lesson, go to the Dashboard > LifterLMS > Course > Lesson > Add Lesson. You can then add/edit its title, description, and edit the settings.

 Lesson Setting:

From the Lesson setting section, you can edit the lesson settings. Here you can add Video /Audio Embed URL for the lesson. You can also allow guests to view the content of this lesson without registering or signing up for the course.

You can choose a prerequisite lesson.

One another amazing feature in the LifterLMS is Content Dripping. Yes, you can show your lesson on any specific date/time, after completion of the prerequisite lesson or after course enrollment, etc.

There is also an option to manage the associated quiz. we will talk about it later.

Featured Image:

If you want to add a featured image instead of featured audio/video, use featured image meta-box (on the right side of the edit/add course page).

Publish the lesson.

Step 4: Using the Course Builder

The LifterLMS Builder allows you to manage the structure and outline of your courses.

You can get to the builder from three different places on the admin panel:

i. From the course’s list screen. Hover over the title of a course and click the Builder link from the displayed actions list.

ii. From the course edit page, locate the Course Builder meta box on the right side of the screen. Click the Launch Course Builder button.
iii. From any lesson edit page, locate the Course Builder meta box on the right side of the screen.
Once you click any of these, it will take you to the LifterLMS Course Builder.

On the LifterLMS Course Builder page, you will see the option to add elements on the right

From here you can add a Section to your LifterLMS course either by clicking the Section button or dragging it into the main course builder section.

Similarly, you can add lessons to your course. You can also add the existing lessons if you want by clicking the Existing Lesson button. Upon selecting Existing Lesson you will be provided with a search bar where you can scroll through your pre-existing lessons or search for them by name.

Changes will be saved automatically.

Step 5: Add a Quiz

You can add the quiz to your lesson by clicking on the quiz icon (question mark) under the desired lesson.

This will open a new popup where you can select the Create New Quiz.
Add quiz title, quiz description, passing percentage, limit attempts and time limit. You can add questions to your quiz by clicking on the Add Question button. This will open a new popup where you can select the type of question.

For the Advanced Questions, you have to add the Advanced Quiz add-on to your LifterLMS site.

You can also add an Assignment to your lesson in a similar way but for that, you need to download and install the Assignment add-on.

Enable the Published option from the top of the pop-up.

Step 6: Create a Certificate and Achievements

LifterLMS has great in-built feature for gamification and engaging your students. You can award certificates to the user on performing a specific event such as scoring 60% in a quiz, completing a lesson or completing a course, etc.

To create a certificate you have to navigate to Engagements > Certificates > Add Certificate.

Add the title, add description/content for the certificate, you can use Merge Code option to add different parameters such as site title, earn date or student name, etc.

 

Certificate Settings:

Enter a title for your certificate. For example Certificate of Completion.

Upload a new background image for your certificate.

To award the certificate to a student, you need to add an engagement trigger. To do so, navigate to Engagements > Add Engagement.
There is also an option to create Achievement Badges for your students. You can award them when they perform specific actions like enrolling in a course, completing a section, passing a quiz, etc.
To award the Achievement Badges to a student, you need to add an engagement trigger. To do so, navigate to Engagements > Add Engagement.
Once the student performed that predefined event/trigger, he/she can view that certificate/achievement badges on the Student Dashboard.

Step 7: Memberships

You can set multiple memberships in LifterLMS. To create membership follow these steps:

  • Navigate to Memberships > Add Membership.
  • Enter the title and description.
  • From Membership Setting section, select Sale Page, edit restriction setting as per need and add courses for this membership. Once the user purchases this membership, he/she will be enrolled in the selected course automatically.
  • Add the access plan for this membership.
  • Add a featured image from the Featured image meta-box.
  • Publish the post.

Step 8: Sidebar Widgets

You can also customize the sidebar for your courses and lessons. Navigate to the Appearance > Widgets. 

Backend:

Frontend:

Another Amazing Thing You Can Do with LifterLMS:

Here is the list of some other cool stuff you can do with the free version of the LifterLMS:

  • You can export or import a course in the LifterLMS.
  • You can also add multiple instructors to a single course for ease.
  • In LifterLMS you can send the customized emails to the user on enrolling to the course, completing the course or earning a certificate, etc (use Notification tab under LifterLMS > Settings). 
  • You can customize the user information fields available on the open registration form, Checkout form, and Account Update form. 
  • There are a lot of powerful and valuable shortcodes you can use in your LifterLMS site. Click here for these shortcodes.
  • LifterLMS can accept payments using PayPal or Stripe or WooCommerce. You have to purchase these extensions.
  • You can sell your LifterLMS course with Easy Digital Downloads by using our amazing product “LifterLMS EDD Integration”. Our article “How to Sell Your LifterLMS Courses with EDD” will help you to do so.

You can use the most popular free theme Astra with the LifterLMS. It will give you very pretty layouts with some additional options.

Wrap It Up:

LifterLMS is free and a full-featured LMS plugin. If you are taking your first step in building an online course website, LifterLMS will be a good start for you. This plugin is a powerful plugin with many amazing features and updated regularly by the LifterLMS team. Therefore, if you are just starting to look for a great solution to build an online course platform, LifterLMS is definitely the solution for you. Besides, it’s very easy to use and install with great features and great design right out of the box.

We’d love to hear if you found this article useful. Please comment below with your thoughts so we can continue to create helpful posts. If you need any assistance with the LifterLMS, don’t hesitate to drop us a line here or through our contact form and one of our Ninjas will be in touch ASAP.