How To Build An Online Training Website

online training

A vertical rise has been seen in e-learning platforms, and online courses and training have become the in-thing. Such online training sites offer more practical know-how and become useful to grow your everyday skills on a subject with prowess compared to traditional learning. Online courses and certificates are also being taken seriously by recruiters. 

Build An Online Training Website

Such online training sites let you share your skills with a huge community and is an excellent way to return back your knowledge to the learner community. Besides, you can also make it a revenue garnering by presenting quality content and superlative training. 

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So, we will be viewing all the important elements that your online training site must-have, on a given budget. Let’s explore the way to build a training site that provides classic e-learning. 

1. Prepare Yourself With A Domain Name And Hosting Plan

Your unique domain name works like your digital address in the way “www.wbcomdesigns.com” is ours. Select a name that is easily recognized, like for instance, ‘www. your businessname.com’, which can be identified easily by your viewers, aligns well with the type of site you prefer to create, and can be remembered with no hassles. 

A hosting system is the place where your courses and content can be stored in the cloud. It is in fact, the residence of your website. 

SSL certificates are mandatory if you decide to make payment settings on your online training site. For it, you are required to receive the SSL certificate. This acts like a security certificate to guarantee the credibility of your site and to make your site be viewed as trustworthy by your clients. 

Several hosting providers that are leading in this field include HostGator, BlueHost, SiteGround, and WP Engine who have excellent hosting plans for both beginners and individual businessmen.

You need to select a hosting plan wisely, as it will be the foundation of your site. For those who are untrained, you can try out the various kinds of hosting present, like free, dedicated, shared, VPS, and managed hosting, advancing onwards towards enterprise schemes.

If you are building a small website, selecting shared hosting is a sensible option. You can include your unique domain name, when you buy your hosting plan, and move on to set up your platform for the website. 

2. Pick A Platform To Create Your Website

Build An Online Training Website

Now, the time has come for you to pick the platform for creating your online training site. You can proceed in several ways by opting for a managed site developed platform like WordPress.com, SaaS platforms such as Thinkific, an independent CMS that is open-source such as WordPress.org

While platforms such as Teachable or Wix can make your website functional within minutes, still they do have a drawback, that is after your site has been launched, it becomes difficult to move out. You are restricted by the features provided on the platform, upgrading your site becomes exorbitant, with little scope to make alterations on your site.  

You are bound by their templates, layout, and features that make your site not different from others.

WordPress is a well-known, user-oriented CMS platform that is open-sourced and enables you to create your own site, with the option to customize the way you want, even with scanty or nil knowledge of coding. In contrast to other platforms, WordPress is totally free.

BlueHost, a hosting provider contains a dedicated hosting set up specifically for WordPress sites, and is an ideal solution for setting up your online platform for training students and professionals alike.

Also Read: Should You “Drip Feed” Your Membership Content?

3. Go For A Learning Management System  

Opting for WordPress as the platform for your online learning and training site, opens up an avenue for you as it contains various LMS plugins that are useful for setting up a training website. One such plugin is LearnDash, which is stacked with features necessary for an online training platform. LearnDash is packed with a wide-ranging course creating options, making lessons related to your separate training modules, integrating video for recorded as well as live sessions, quizzing if you require conducting a test!

Build An Online Training Website

LearnDash is credible and approved by well-known websites, is very user friendly, and lets you install your courses in a flash. Its pricing arrangement begins at $159, and if you want to include additional administrative control, you can select the Pro Panel priced at $189. Besides, for a simple training site, the base plugin performs quite well.

4. Set Up A theme For Your Online Training Website

Your WordPress site requires a theme as it impacts the design, functionality, user interaction, and the appearance of your website and includes the font size on the webpage. 

As you have considered LearnDash as your plugin for LMS, it is now possible to set up a LearnDash supported theme even prior to installing the plugin. There are numerous training themes available for LearnDash, each stacked with individual features. 

An excellent theme for online training and coaching is Learnmate with its perfect course layout, course review modules, upcoming course, course accessibility through extra widgets, and visual page builder support to build your website. 

If you want your e-learning and training site to become more interactive, you can use the Lifter LMS theme. This advanced LMS theme from WordPress combines with Learnmate and works like the perfect LMS. It streamlines your payments from trainees and members by setting levels of membership using Paid Membership Pro, sell your courses by customizing eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce and EDD, lets your learners access any topic directly from a single page. Students can exchange their views on the course through reviews, besides preparing the student beforehand.prior to the release of the course. 

These two are the finest themes to pair with LearnDash LMS.along with BuddyBoss.

5. Make your Classes For Online Training Website

A huge task that entails when you are building your online training site is course creation. 

The adapatibility of building such a training portal indicates that you do not have to make all the courses personally, but can make your instructors take care of that.

You have the option to either shun course creation totally, or make some related to the subjects you are proficient in.

Building courses are quite simple in LearnDash. You receive four options to include content – lessons, sections, quizzes, and topics. The drag-n-drop Course builder makes the rearrangement of these components convenient and also displays their appearance at the front-end in actual time.

6. Incorporate Video Sessions And Generate Events

As you are running a training platform, live conferences, and video discourses are an important component of your teaching curriculum.

LearnDash works seamlessly with well-known video conferencing applications such as Zoom that enables performance of live lectures and even schedules it for your complete batch of trainees. 

To carry out events, you require to install a plugin such as Event Espresso, that effectively organizes, and performs online events. This plugin teams well with LearnDash also and helps to show your events in your course. 

Also Read: Keyword Research Tools : Free, Freemium and Paid Options

7. Include Co-instructors As Well

Can there be any training platform with no instructors, Isn’t it?

Your course mentors and instructors are your main resources when you create your eLearning site. What you require is to offer them the maximum liberty to build and design superb courses and handle your trainees and learners productively.

Hand in Hand, you also require an iota of control over content creation, so as to remain in tune with the going ons on your site. 

Generally, LearnDash lets only Administrators to make and handle courses. This indicates that you either need to make the course on your own or make Admin your every instructor Admin.

In both cases, this option is not workable, as making and handling every course yourself can be taxing and nor is it possible to expose your site totally to your co-instructors, as it entails a massive threat to security.

You can try out the Instructor Role plugin for LearnDash that installs Instructors on your LearnDash site, that is multiple instructors having the scope to conduct their own courses and create it from the front-end. They can construct and sell courses, create quizzes, and lessons, enroll students, and conduct everything that a Course Author would normally do, but cannot access the main website.

Besides, your approval would be required as an Administrator, before being published online. This guarantees your absolute control so far as the content is concerned. After adding your instructors, you can fix their earned commission, each time a training module is bought by a student or pay for essay.

For every sale performed, a flat rate or a percentage commission can be set. Fixing a commission offers your platform a clear linear hierarchy and relieves you from making payments to the instructors yourself. Just by automating payment, your instructors can earn depending on the performance and success of their course.

Moreover, a profile page sharing the profile of the instructor with essential details about their qualification, bio, proficiency, courses made, ratings and much more lend it a professional touch and is a decive step in the making of your online training site. 

8. Install your eCommerce platform To Sell Your Programs

After your training sessions are formulated, you require to sell those sessions that are Premium on your site. To do it, you require a powerful, versatile eCommerce plugin that contains absolute features for building a marketplace for training courses.  

WooCommerce is among the perfect eCommerce plugins powered by WordPress, has robust support, and a massive community. Being convenient, it is replete with functionality, along with a battery of developers having the skill to help you to create your eCommerce platform.

Moreover, WooCommerce also performs actively with LearnDash and promotes a host of payment gateway inclusions, to let you receive payments with utmost convenience. A redeeming feature of WooCommerce is its free availability, along with its integrations with PayPal and Stripe. With no set up costs involved, both Stripe and PayPal can be started for free.

9. Incorporating WooCommerce And Monetization

To create a premium course, you need to add a WooCommerce Product. New products are added by navigating to the WordPress admin panel where you can offer a name, description, sale price as well as a regular price. You can also include a new schedule for selling the product. After a product is added, you can also publish it. 

For making and selling courses, some dedicated pages like the home page, registration plus Login page for signing in, Shop page for listing courses, Cart and Checkout pages for payment and purchase of courses, and a Contact page for connecting with students are required on your learning platform.

These page layouts are present by default in your theme, while the layouts for eCommerce exist in WooCommerce. 

Final Thoughts

These steps listed above cover the basic fundamentals needed for installing your online training site. However, it caters to the essential demands of creating such a website, and maintains it within a tight budget. But, when you go for further customization, the development charges may rise. 


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