How to say Hello in Mexican

I often work with people who are just getting ready to pursue their dreams. Whether it’s starting a company, just starting to take a hobby more seriously, dreaming about being on their own again, or being hip deep in a new tech start-up, I’m game to help if people want the advice and are willing to do the work. For the last few years I’ve been developing course material for a program I call “Leveraging Trust” and it’s all about finding the center of who you are, and your experience, so that you can develop products and services from the position of a trusted advisor.

My Target

Recently, I’ve started thinking about putting this program online at a cheaper rate, so that some people could walk thru the program on their own before meeting with me. And this is, in short, what an e-learning course would be. A simple way for people to:

Sign Up Pay a fee Get access to the first module Watch videos and download handouts Mark that step as complete Get access to the next module Rinse and repeat

This should be easy….

Years ago, seriously in 1995, I built one of the first online educational systems at Berkeley Lab (and even demonstrated it to a group of guys that would later build Blackboard). So I’ve watched as learning management systems (LMS) have risen and sank on the promises of ease: ease of use & ease of development. From my perspective, nothing is easier than doing e-learning on WordPress. So I thought I’d give it a go and build this version of Leveraging Trust (coming soon!) in WordPress as an online course.

I want to take a second to talk about how I use video in this program. I know YouTube does some great stuff. But to date, I’ve not been able to ensure that only certain people have access to my videos. Namely, I don’t want non-students to get my content because this represents years of work and I don’t want to give it away. So I use . And what I love about Vimeo is that with a Pro account, I can determine which URLs (domains) my videos can be played from (or embedded). Since chrislema.com is on the list, if you were in this course you could watch it. But you can’t find it on Vimeo directly or via search. You can’t get it from my site. You can’t watch it any other way, than in this course, which is protected by .

Create all the units you want (or need).

Step Twelve: Connect Units to Modules & Courses

Step Thirteen: Create your Course Launch Page

This is the point in the 20 steps where you’ll connect Paid Memberships Pro with WP Courseware. It’s really simple. You start by creating a page, just like any other time. Only on this page, you’re going to want to drop a shortcode that automatically places your course curriculum on it. This page’s url is the one that you’d send out in the confirmation email from PMP for this membership level. It’s a page that you’ll also protect (look on the right and check the box so that WordPress knows this page needs to be protected). Seriously, e-learning on WordPress has never been this easy before.

Step Fourteen: Confirm that the Course Launch Page is Working

Smart people check their work. You’re smart. What can I say? But you likely haven’t added yourself to this membership group that you created, so here’s what you’ll see.

Step Fifteen: Add yourself to this Membership Level

Don’t you love testing. Now you know it’s working. So go to your user, and in the user details, you can add yourself to this membership level. Then go back to that page. Here’s what you should see.

Notice how only the first unit has a link. The rest aren’t linked up yet because of that setting that I marked to sequentially release the units. But you could change your setting if you want.

Additionally WP Courseware comes with a widget that lets you put course progress in the sidebar if you want.

Step Sixteen: Test Purchasing

So log back out, and go to the url. You’ll see that earlier screen from Step Fourteen. Click on the registration, and you’ll see the list of memberships (or course) that you can buy. Click on the “I want…” link for the next step.

Step Seventeen: Create a Member

Now that you’ve clicked on “I want…” you’ll get to the registration screen. You’ll be creating a new user, as well as giving them the membership role needed to get access to the course.

Step Eighteen: Pay

I love how you’re flying thru these steps. It takes me longer to write them and you to read them, than for you to do them. But let’s do this…(on your own site)…Fill in your payment details and sign up. If you’re using Stripe, it doesn’t take you off the page. I already wrote , so if you’re not using Stripe, go get yourself an account.

Step Nineteen: Enjoy Unit One

If you’ve done everything right, you should be able to see the confirmation link that takes you to the launch page that lets you see unit one that has a link that lets you in to see the special video content that can only be seen on this page. Say that fast without breathing. It makes you giddy. As it should!

Step Twenty: Monitor Progress

Assuming that you’ve finished your own unit one, and marked it complete, there’s one more cool thing to check out. That’s when you go to your user screen. Now you’ll see all the students and exactly where they are in the course journey.

Conclusion

Check your watch. Did it take you more than 20 minutes? If it did, try the steps again, now that you’re a bit more comfortable. I bet you can do it in less than 20 minutes. It did over here. But my point wasn’t just about time. It was to show you that e-learning on WordPress didn’t have to be complicated with a bunch of coding effort.

Could you do more? Absolutely. Both and let you create quizzes – though Gravity Forms hasn’t released theirs yet and FormidablePro doesn’t do as much as Gravity Forms. But is looking at adding even more to it’s plugin. So it’s an area to keep watching.

But now you know. So what you do is up to you.