Anyone that has tried to customize WordPress for a specific purpose, such as providing courses and course work, will know how hard it can be to get everything just right. Despite all the work you put into it, something will always be a little off and something will not quite fit the scenario that you are trying to create. One of those very difficult themes and frameworks to create from scratch in WordPress is one to provide a course of study.
There are too many linking issues to handle for someone that either does not have the time or the background knowledge. It is not just about coding, but being able to work within the code that someone else has creating and make it do what you want. Courses are a great way to get extra traffic and a great base for a new and aspiring website.
1. Course
This is a lot less complex course plugin. It is very simple and free. All this does is provide a concise framework for listing courses and classes for an institution. It is that simple. This is useful for many types of people. This can be used for anything from a day care, a night school or any other standard institution. There are those that need a way to present the material they have to offer and the dates and times when they are offered. We recently saw this used for a piano and music teacher that was always emailing the same document to interested people.
The very simplicity of this plugin makes it nice. For those that are using other WordPress sites to offer classes and courses, this is a nice sort of “table of contents” for the other sites that they use.
2. Simple Course Creator
This is a simple plugin that can be used to create courses or any other material that will follow a series. It is easy to use and you can be up and running within a short period of time. The key to this plugin that we have found is to install the plugin before adding the content. It can work the other way around, but may take some extra tinkering to get it to look right.
There is also the option of exporting a preexisting site from WordPress, install the plugin and then import the data back into WordPress, but anyone that has ever moved a WordPress site will know that the import and export process is not that great. It has gotten much better as WordPress has grown, but it can still give a person a little bit of trouble.
3. LFE Online Courses
This is an interesting plugin that utilizes the LFE website as well as your own. It costs you nothing and you are creating the course yourself. This is almost like an affiliate program and you keep a large 85% of the revenue that is created. If you are looking to start making some money from a domain, this can be a good start. No one is going to get rich overnight and no one is going to be able to quit their day job in a month, but it can get you on your way quickly and with the right efforts on your part, you can be pulling in traffic very quickly.
There is a Facebook integration method that will bring even more visitors and you can create a large number of courses that link together, whether it be through the same site or many others. This is a good foundation to get started and to help some people learn along the way.