Selling courses is a great way to monetize your website and create an income stream. By selling courses on your website, you get to keep 100% of the profits and don’t have to worry about paying fees to third-party sites.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you step by step how to create a WordPress website for online courses using Divi/Elementor and LifterLMS plugin. Let’s begin!
Getting Started With Your WordPress Course Website
To get started with your online course website, you’ll need to purchase a domain name and a hosting plan. In this part of the tutorial, we’ll go through the following steps:
- Getting a domain name and hosting
- Installing WordPress
- Installing Divi and LifterLMS
Here’s a quick look at the website we’ll be creating:
Let’s go through these steps one by one.
Step 1: Get Domain and Hosting
The first thing you need to do is buy a domain name and a hosting plan. While there are hundreds of hosting companies out there, I personally recommend Siteground.
I compared Siteground with 15 other hosting companies and Siteground came out as the most reliable company with the fastest loading times. It also has stellar support which is another reason why I recommend it.
Start by going to Siteground’s website and you’ll notice they offer three different plans. I suggest you choose the Grow Big plan as this will allow you to host an unlimited number of websites. However, you can choose whichever plan you want.
Once you’ve selected your plan, you’ll have the option to buy a domain name from Siteground. You can choose a general name for your store or you can be more specific and choose a name that’s related to the types of products you’ll be selling. Once you have a domain name you’re happy with, complete the checkout process by entering your payment information on the next page.
Siteground will then create your account and you’ll be taken to your customer area.
Step 2: Install WordPress
In the customer area, you can see all the details related to your hosting plan. The next step here is to install WordPress. Click on the orange button that says Start Your Website and then select Start New Website > WordPress.
On the next page, you’ll need to enter a username and password for your site. You’ll use those to log in to your WordPress website so be sure to write them down somewhere. Click the Continue button and Siteground complete the WordPress installation on your site.
When the installation is finished, you’ll see a blue button prompting you to manage your site. Click it and you’ll be taken to the page where you can see all the WordPress installations you have. Next to each site will be a login icon which you need to click to go directly to your WordPress dashboard.
Once you’re in your WordPress dashboard, there are a few things you need to do before going any further with the site setup. For starters, disable the plugin installed by Siteground as you don’t need it. Go to Plugins > Installed plugins. Here, be sure to deactivate and delete the WordPress Starter plugin.
Then, go to Settings > Permalinks and select the Post Name option. Setting your permalinks to Post name is better for your users as well as search engines. Save your changes.
The last step is to fix the SSL error which is telling us the website is not secure. You can fix this by installing and activating the Really Simple SSL plugin.
Once all those steps are taken care of, it’s time to install our theme and a few other helpful plugins for a websites.
Step 3: Installing Divi Theme and LifterLMS
The final step in this part of the tutorial is to install the Divi theme and the LifterLMS plugin that will give us the course functionality.
Go to ElegantThemes and click the Pricing link in the main menu. Here, you can choose between the yearly and lifetime membership. I recommend you choose the lifetime membership as this allows you to install the theme on an unlimited number of websites and gives you the lifetime support. Once you’ve selected your membership plan, create your ElegantThemes account, submit your payment, and then download the Divi theme.
Installing Elementor Theme .
We can also use Elementor for course and install LifterLMS plugin that will give us the course functionality.
Go to Elementor Theme and click the Pricing link in the main menu. Here, you can choose between the personal ,plus and expert membership. I recommend you choose the plus membership as this allows you to install the theme on more than one websites and gives you the year support. Once you’ve selected your membership plan, create your Elementor account, submit your payment, and then download the elementor theme.
Once the theme has been installed, activate it and then follow the Wizard setup to complete the process.
Go back to your WordPress dashboard and head to Appearance > Themes > Add new. Locate the zipped folder with the Divi theme and install it. When the theme has been installed, click on Activate.
To install the LifterLMS plugin, go to Plugins > Add new. Search for the LifterLMS plugin and then install it. The LifterLMS plugin will allow you to easily create courses straight in your WordPress website and sell them. You can also use it to create membership sites. The plugin is free to download.
You’ll also need to install the LifterLMS Labs plugin for extra functionality we’ll need. This plugin will make the LifterLMS plugin compatible with the Divi theme so you can easily and seamlessly build out your course pages. The plugin is free to download from the official repository.
Customizing Your Site
Now that we have everything in place, it’s time to start customizing our site and creating the necessary pages.
Start by going to Pages > Add new. Name the page Home and publish it. Then, repeat the process to create the About and Contact pages.
Once you’ve created the pages, go to Appearance > Menus. Enter the name for your menu and click the Create menu button. Then, drag all the pages you’ve created earlier to the newly created menu and click Save changes.
Then, go to Theme Customizer and select the Homepage settings. Here, choose the option to display a static page and select your Homepage from the dropdown menu. Click Publish to save your changes. Similarly we will do with Elementor Theme.
Now that you have the pages for your site, you can use the Divi theme builder to add content to your pages. As you can see from the screenshot, you can easily drag and drop blocks, adjust padding, and control the style of the blocks and the page.
Step 4:Building Out Your Course
The last step part of the tutorial is to actually build out your course. Start by going to Plugins > Installed plugins. Locate LifterLMS and then activate it. You’ll be taken to the setup wizard which will create the necessary pages for your course website.
After the setup wizard is complete, go back to Plugins > Installed plugins and activate the LifterLMS Labs plugin.
To add a new course, all you have to do is go to Courses > Add new. You can then add sections, lessons, quizzes, achievements, certificates, and more.
Don’t forget to set up your payment gateways when you’re done building out your course. This will allow you to take payments and make money from your course. Let’s start building up your own courses.
