Life as we know it has changed forever. Social distancing is here to stay. People are talking about avoiding crowds and public places for the next year.
All companies and businesses are making efforts to go online. But creating a website is not an easy task, especially if you are a sole proprietor.
Reading: How to create a training website
Lots of independent instructors and teachers in various industries – dance, martial arts, yoga, music, therapy, exercise and fitness, and many others – are facing the problem of completing their courses online.
If you’re that kind of solopreneur struggling to overcome Corona and create some semblance of normalcy for your online classes, here’s how you can do it do – in under $450.
Typically, building an eLearning website costs at least $1200+. However, we know you may not have that investment capital yet.
So we’re going to see all the must-have items you need to set up your training website on a budget.
Let’s take a look Let’s take a closer look at how these costs are distributed.
How to create an online training website?
#1 Prepare your hosting and your Domain ahead
There are three things you need to start building your online training website:
- A unique domain name – This will be yours digital address, like “www.wisdmlabs.com” is ours. Choose a recognizable domain name, e.g. For example, “www.yourcompanyname.com” that’s easily recognized by your audience, fits the type of website you’re trying to set up, and is memorable.
- A hosting package – this is the home of your website where all your courses and website content is stored in the cloud.
- An SSL certificate – this is a security certificate for Make sure your website is trusted by your customers. An SSL certificate is a must if you want to set up payments on your website. As we plan to do this for our training platform, you will need the SSL certificate.
There are several great hosting providers like BlueHost, WP Engine, SiteGround, HostGator that have great hosting plans for beginners and solo business people.
The choice of a hosting package is a matter of careful consideration as it will be the foundation of your website. For the uninitiated, there are different types of hosting such as free, shared, dedicated, VPS and managed hosting, gradually moving towards enterprise plans.
Since we are just starting out with a small website, shared hosting is offered is a good choice.
We recommend BlueHost, which offers hosting plans from as little as $2.66/month.
In addition, since we decided to build our website on WordPress (more on that later), BlueHost is an excellent choice as it comes with a free domain name and website security certificate for one year.
You can add your unique domain name when purchasing your hosting plan and then proceed to set up your website platform.
Total cost of domain + hosting + SSL certificate = 2.66 $*12 = ~$40.
#2 Choose a platform to build your website
Now that you have the basics on how to Once you have set up your online training website, it’s time to choose the platform on which to build it.
There are several ways to do this. The choice is yours:
- A managed website development platform like Wix or WordPress.com
- SaaS platforms like Teachable or Thinkific
- An independent Open -Source platform content management systems like WordPress.org or Moodle
While platforms like Wix or Teachable can help you get your website off the ground fairly quickly, they do have one inherent disadvantage, once you have your website up and running on the platform, it is very difficult to move away from it.
You are limited by the features available on the platform, scaling your website can quickly become expensive, and there is no scope to make independent changes to your site. You need to stick to their templates, design, and features to make your site one of many similar-looking sites out there.
That’s why we recommend WordPress.org.
WordPress is a highly popular, easy-to-use, open-source CMS platform that allows you to create your own website and customize it however you want, even with little to no programming knowledge.
To give you some context give, here a statistic. WordPress powers 36.88% of the top 1 million websites in the world.
Trusted by renowned organizations such as Harvard Gazette, Bloomberg, The New Yorker, BBC America, Microsoft News Center, Vogue India and personalities such as Beyonce, Katy Perry, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones and many others.
Moreover, unlike the other platforms, WordPress is completely free.
Hosting providers like BlueHost even have dedicated hosting plans just for WordPress websites, making setting up your online training platform a breeze!
Cost for WordPress = $0
#3 Choose a Learning Management System
With WordPress as the platform of choice for your online training website, a world of Learning Management System options open up before you. WordPress has over 8 different LMS plugins that can be used to set up a training website.
Of these, we recommend LearnDash.
LearnDash is a full-fledged LMS plugin that offers all the functionality you need for your online training platform. This includes extensive course creation options, lessons you can create for your various training modules, video integrations for live and recorded sessions, even quiz options if you need to take a test!
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LearnDash is trusted and recommended by some of the world’s most popular websites and the system is extremely easy to use so you can set up your courses in no time.
LearnDash pricing plans start at $159. If you need extra management power, you can choose the Pro Panel supported version for $189.
But for your basic training website, the basic plugin should be good enough.
Cost of LearnDash = $159.
#4 Set up your website’s theme for online training
Every WordPress website needs a theme. This is your website’s interface; How it will look, work, and interact with your users all depends on the theme.
Now that you’ve decided to use LearnDash as your LMS plugin, you can install a LearnDash-compatible theme , even before you set the plugin on. There are several great LearnDash training themes on the market, each with their own set of features.
We recommend eLumine.
It’s one of the fastest themes for LearnDash and has a variety of engaging course layouts for students.
A real-time customizer helps you see the changes on your website as you make them. In addition, it has distraction-free learning modes like “Reading” and “Night” mode, RTL support, and integrates well with other plugins required for your eLearning website.
eLumine also offers Neo layouts that vastly improve the look and aesthetics of LearnDash pages, creating a better UX and distraction-free design that can greatly increase student engagement.
Some of the other popular themes for LearnDash are Astra , BuddyBoss for LearnDash.
Each of these themes has its own USP, so you can try comparing them to see which one suits your needs best.
Cost of eLumine = 100 $
Cost for eLumine + LEAP = $148
#5 Create all courses for your online training website
We will now begin the mammoth task of creating courses.
The flexibility of an online training site means you don’t have to create all the courses yourself, your instructors can do it for you.
You can either skip creating courses altogether, or create a few on topics related to your expertise.
Creating courses in LearnDash is pretty easy.
There are four options for adding content – Sections, Lessons, Topics and Tests – in descending hierarchy. The drag-and-drop course builder helps you easily rearrange these elements and visualize in real-time how they will look on the frontend.
Check out this LMS setup guide for step-by-step instructions on how to set up courses, lessons, tests, assignments and more.
#6 Integrate video lectures and Create events (optional)
As an online training platform, live sessions and video lectures will be an integral part of your curriculum.
LearnDash integrates with popular video conferencing software like Zoom to help you plan and deliver live presentations for all your batches.
The basic Zoom plan is free, as well as LearnDash-Zoom integration plugin, so here you have no additional investment costs.
Cost for video lectures = $0.
To run events, you must Set up a plugin like Event Espresso, which is a powerful way to create, organize, manage, and run events online.
Event Espresso also integrates with LearnDash via a LearnDash Event Espresso integration plugin , so you can display your event directly in your course!
Event Espresso cost for event integration = $79.95
#7 Add your assistant coaches
What’s a training platform without instructors, right?
Your trainers and teachers will be your greatest asset in building your eLearning website; You need to make sure they have all the freedom they need to create and design great courses and efficiently manage your learners.
At the same time, you also need to have some level of control over the content being created , so to speak, from an eagle’s eye view, so that you have a complete idea of what is happening on your platform.
Usually, LearnDash only allows administrators to create and manage courses. That means you either have to create all the courses yourself or make all your instructors admins.
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Both cases are not a viable option as creating and managing all the courses yourself will be exhausting, nor can you afford to fully open your website to all your fellow instructors; this is a huge potential security threat.
So what do you do? We recommend using the Instructor Role Plugin for LearnDash.
Instructor Role is a plugin that allows you to set up Instructors on your LearnDash website; H. People having the freedom to create and manage their own courses from the front end.
For example, let’s say you are starting an online dance academy. You can have multiple dance teachers as “instructors” on your platform who can run their own classes, teach your students and manage workouts.
You can create and sell classes, enroll students and create assignments and quizzes and do anything a course author can do, except not be able to access the core website.
Also, any content they create must be approved by you, the admin, before being published online. This ensures that you have complete control over the content that is published at any point.
Once you have added your teachers, you can set the commission they will earn for each student buys their training module.
There may be a flat fee or percentage commission for each sale. Setting up commissions gives your online training platform a clear linear hierarchy and takes away the headache of paying the instructors yourself. You can easily automate payment and your instructors will earn based on the performance of their course!
Starting with version 3.5.0, the WISDM Instructor Role includes a professional and customizable instructor profile page that can be used to share any necessary Information about lecturers on your website. Instructors can use this space to add details such as their photo, biography, expertise, qualifications, courses created, reviews, etc.
Profile pages give Instructors credibility and help them showcase their personality. The profile page can also be used to share contact information.
This is one of the most important steps in creating your online training website.
WISDM Instructor Role Cost = 80 $
#8 Set up your ecommerce platform to sell your training programs
After creating your training sessions, you need to sell the premium on your site.
To do this, you need a strong, flexible ecommerce plugin that has all the features you need to build your training marketplace.
We recommend WooCommerce.
Not only is it the best ecommerce plugin for WordPress, but it also has great support and a huge community. It’s easy to use, packed with features, and has a number of developers who can help you build your ecommerce platform should you need any help.
It also works seamlessly with LearnDash and supports multiple payment gateway integrations so you can easily collect payments.
The best part is that WooCommerce is free, as are the integrations with Stripe and PayPal. Plus, since Stripe and PayPal have no setup costs, you can get started for free.
Cost for WooCommerce + payment gateway = $0.
#9 Create home and shop pages for your online training website
When it comes to creating courses and sell, you need some dedicated pages on your online learning platform, like
- The home page, which will be the face of your website
- The registration and login page, on which students can enroll in. Course
- The store page that lists all your courses
- The cart and checkout pages that users use when purchasing and checking out for courses
- A contact page where potential students can get in touch with you if they have any questions
The layouts for most of these pages are usually available in your theme by default, while the eCommerce layouts are available in WooCommerce. (If you’re using eLumine, you’ll have all the LearnDash and WooCommerce layouts at your fingertips.)
You can customize these base templates to fit your brand style, or create entirely new templates to better suit your taste .
In summary
This summarizes the core functionality you need to set up your online training website.
Keep in mind though that this is a very rough structure, addressing only the essential needs to keep the budget within bounds.
Note, however, that this process is enough to create and build just a simple website Operation. Should you decide to further customize it, the development costs will increase.
Now let’s calculate the total cost of building your training platform =
And that’s it! You’ve got an online training website with WordPress ready for less than $450!
If you need more details on how to set up your LearnDash website exactly, here is a handy guide you can refer to.
Also feel free to leave a comment leave if you have any questions. Or you can contact us if you would like us to set up this website for you.
In the meantime, happy building!
See also: How to Make a Mailing List in Gmail for Business Use
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