Ever thought of starting an educational website? For your staff, for a lively community with the same passion, or for your (online store) customers.
Online learning is on the rise. More and more people are working via online portals to enhance their skills.
One of the most important things about online learning is that you offer good and, above all, varied teaching material. So no boring texts, but alternated with videos, a fun quiz, a live chat with the teacher, reviews of the courses and of course a certificate afterward.
Nowadays, it’s relatively easy to build these online platforms yourself with WordPress. These are suitable for companies that educate employees, training centers, coaches, schools, universities and the popular MOOCs. These are online courses for students, spread all over the world.
Educational website themes
These so-called WordPress learning management systems offer an incredible amount of possibilities. You create an online environment for people where they can learn anything. At home or on the train, at any time and you can set your own pace.
What can you do with these educational website themes? A lot, I can tell you.
The installation is easy; most educational website themes have a demo that you can easily integrate. This way you immediately have an example website which you can then customize to your wishes.
- You can give the courses to your staff, customers, but also sell courses with the built-in shop option. Often a membership is also possible.
- At the end of the course, you can award a certificate.
- Course reviews, reaction, and discussion possibility.
- Dashboard for students and statistics.
- Quizzes and assignments.
- You can also build in a community so that students and teachers of a specific course can talk, chat or discuss with each other.
- Extensive search function.
- And much more…
The future…
It’s all very ingenious and it gives unique opportunities to do something beautiful with an educational website. For example: Where you now only offer products in your shop you can also offer courses in the future to support your products. Because the best education themes also have the possibility of an online store.
Think of an online store in craft articles that serves its target group with fun courses to do something with crafting. Simple courses that you can develop yourself with this learning management system.
This way, the online stores with this unique content will be able to distinguish themselves from their competitors. This development of delivering extra added value will only increase.
Building educational website
Now you might think it’s very complicated to build such a website. Of course, it is a bit more complicated than an average website. But a website builder that is well versed in the popular WordPress can build an educational website himself. And also customize it so that it meets all the requirements you want.
John Dewey American philosopher 1859-1952
I myself have already experimented with the construction of educational websites. And I have to say, I was impressed by the many options.
But what are good educational website themes? I will tell you about my experiences.
WP Education
This is one of my favorite educational website themes. I have quite a lot of experience with it and I find it a very nice theme. Very extensive, with many possibilities to offer varied content.
You’ve got more than twelve demos, so you’ve got a lot of choice on how to set up your website.
In addition, WP Education uses the Visual Composer, so you can easily create and customize pages.
Also, a membership is possible and you can sell courses. It’s also nice that you can subscribe to the newsletter of the makers of the theme, in which they give tips on how to further develop your e-learning website.
The theme is not very old yet and has attracted many buyers in a relatively short period of time. More than 12,000 have been sold, so that says something about the popularity of this theme for e-learning.
Buy theme: Education WordPress Theme – Eduma
2. Course builder
This is the little brother of WP Education but is also going through a big growth sprint. This education theme was built by the same makers but is newer.
All best practices have been included, only the big difference is that it has a different design. Another important distinction is that the courses in this theme are not divided into tabs, as is the case with WP Education.
Here you can see the tabs with ‘description’, ‘curriculum’, ‘instructors’ and ‘reviews’, which are built into WP Education.
At the Course builder, all parts of the course (the description, the content of the lessons, information about the teacher and the reviews) are conveniently arranged on a page. However, you will be scrolling to the bottom of the page for a little longer.
This theme also has an events calendar, so you can also invite people to a webinar or a live chat.
Course builder also has its own shop, so you can offer all kinds of products.
Buy theme: Corporate Training WordPress Theme
WPLMS
WPLMS is the most popular theme of ThemeForest. And rightly so, because it is a gem. But the theme is also somewhat older (from February 2014) and not the most beautiful in terms of design. But it has an incredible number of functions and can build on a lot of past experience.
The theme is regularly reinforced with updates and can still last for years. WPMLS has a lot of demos and also additional plugins, which you get for free. Think of the Slider Revolution, Layerslider, Events Calendar, Visual Composer and much more.
The theme loads fairly quickly, and that’s something to take into account. Because these themes are quite ‘heavy’ because they have a lot of functions and run on many plugins. A good hosting party is, therefore, a necessity.
New are the dynamic quizzes, which ensure that you give your students the necessary variation in the course offered.
In short, WPMLS is a great education platform to get online learning going.
Buy theme: WPLMS WordPress theme
University
This theme is a little simpler and therefore a little easier to build yourself. Of course, you still have to come from a good place to install and set all this up properly. The makers themselves indicate this: This education WordPress theme is feature-rich but very easy to use.
Of course, this also includes the most important functions, such as extensive courses, an event manager, and an online store possibility. You can also add a forum to it.
The theme is highly appreciated and already has more than 4000 buyers, free support, and extensive online documentation. Beautiful.
Buy theme: University WordPress theme
DotLife
DotLife is a much-sold theme that we also mention it.
But it is also a fully-fledged e-Learning system, with which you can make online learning very accessible. Academy also has extensive possibilities with users. They can register, log in, upload their own avatars and monitor the progress of the courses.
Buy theme: DotLife Coach Online Courses WordPress
Conclusion
Online learning is still in its early stages. The online courses offered are still relatively simple and monotonous. By using beautiful technological solutions, such as an e-learning platform website, you gain access to beautiful solutions. ThemeForest already offers several of these educational website themes.
I, therefore, expect them to become more and more popular. Online learning will take off.
Building these complex websites was often an obstacle to actually developing an e-learning platform. Nowadays, however, that should no longer be a problem. Find a good WordPress builder or you can even build such a platform yourself. It’s no longer reserved for larger companies alone.
I’m very curious whether there are already people who have built their own e-learning platform. Let me know! Or maybe you’ve seen an example of a great online platform for online learning.
