A learning management system, or LMS, is similar to a content management system, except that most of the resources and tools in an LMS are dedicated to the delivery of eBooks and eLessons. So, basically an LMS is similar to WordPress, except these LMSs are in the form of WordPress themes, putting some handy tools for designing, editing, uploading and selling eCourses in the comfort of your own website. Udemy is one of the more popular course-selling platforms online, but as many online teachers will tell you, it’s much easier to make lots of money from your online lessons by posting them on your own website.
What Features to Look For in An LMS WordPress Theme
The goal of an LMS is to construct an environment that has all of your courses organized properly. Not only that, but it’s essential to have a layout where some of the content is revealed to your users, while other content is blocked behind a pay wall. This strategy ensures that people understand what they can get from your online course, but it also prevents them from stealing anything. Many of these themes also provide integrations with lots of payment processors, along with settings for offering promotions and discounts along the way. The best of the LMS WordPress themes are designed to have a fun look, but also with professional structures and business functionalities.
Who Might Find These LMS Templates Useful?
Bloggers, online teachers, and educational organizations generally utilize learning management systems to train people online and bring in some money in the process. In addition, LMSs are constantly used by companies as internal training modules. For example, a business may have a sexual harassment training program that’s required of all employees.
Our Favorite LMS Themes
We’ve compiled this list of our favorite themes for using WordPress as an LMS. If you feel we’ve missed any, please let us know by leaving a comment.
Rare Academic Pro
The Rara Academic Pro theme is perfect for educational institutions and anyone looking to sell courses online or present information about their institutions in a modern and professional manner. The template comes with lots of handy features, including eCommerce integration, a dedicated courses module, and an events manager that’s great for promoting your upcoming events.
Showcase photos of your institution with the beautiful gallery, and boost your credibility by displaying testimonials from your past and existing students. A simple and clean blog is included with the Rara Academic Pro theme, providing space to share updates about your institution and generate more traffic to your website. Also, the theme is translation-ready to cater for your foreign students, and there’re plenty of prominent social media icons to connect with your other platforms.
LMS - Responsive Learning Management System
The LMS theme has a pretty boring name, but it’s packed with exactly what you need for selling courses online. You gain access to the WooThemes Sensei plugin support, along with Events Calendar Pro support. This way, you can display certain courses and events on a calendar to remind people when they need to be online. You gain access to a teacher profile management center, helping out with the personalization of your site. If someone pays to take a course, they are going to want to know who is teaching before forking over any money. A picture, resume, and past experience is ideal for showing that your instructors are real people with quality experiences. Along with that, the Contact Form 7 plugin integrates flawlessly with the theme, keeping teachers and students in touch, while also giving you another spot to manage your customers. BuddyPress support is provided, which is a plugin that turns your learning website into a social network. This way, students can send messages to each other and also interact with teachers without having to send an email or something similar.
Payments are collected through the WooCommerce plugin, which is easy to configure and manage. Many people who use the LMS theme make it so that users can pay for memberships or one-time lessons. You may even consider selling eBooks or merchandise as an additional monetization method. Custom course post type organizes your content in a reasonable format and it tends to let people know when they are on a page that is meant specifically for learning. Moving on, the LMS WordPress theme includes a one-click demo install, cutting down on the time it would generally take to get the theme completely installed. We like this for both beginners and advanced users because it speeds up the installation and setup process. Along with a mega menu, responsive design, paid and free courses, and a beautiful grid view, the LMS WordPress theme is one of our favorites for selling online learning materials.
iknow
Consider the iknow WordPress theme if you’re looking for a cleaner solution with student profiles and quizzes integrated directly into the system. Teacher profiles are offered as well, but the true standout feature is the fact that students can build their own profiles, tell other students what they are like, while also sharing images, thoughts, and skills. Create quizzes on the backend and send them when students reach certain parts of your courses. For example, if you’re teaching people about WordPress, a quiz may be in order after users finish the WordPress 101 module. WooCommerce integrates well with the iknow theme, generating a fluent process when collecting payments and showing people what course options you have. Feel free to include attachments on your course plans and use the rating system for people to let you know if they actually like a class or not.
The ratings allow you to get feedback directly from your students and you can also figure out which of the courses are most useful and profitable. Event management comes with the iknow theme as well, giving you a chance to share when upcoming courses are being released. Events and courses are managed on the backend and it doesn’t require you to touch a line of code. The responsive design is great for when users want to go through coursework on the go and the slider is generally sold for a price, but you get all of the tools for free. Multiple home page layouts are offered to keep your branding intact and a CAPTCHA module is packaged into the theme, making it harder for hackers to gain access. The one-click dummy installation works wonders, and the mega menu comes into play when you really start expanding with a huge collection of courses. Along with a drag-and-drop builder and various page layouts, the iknow WordPress theme should remain in the back of your head when shopping around.
Clever Course
The Clever Course WordPress theme looks sleek and useful, with responsive design and a beautiful module on the backend for uploading course materials. Create online courses and quizzes with ease and sell courses with the integrated PayPal gateway. A page builder is provided for seeing what changes are being made on the backend and an instructor profile area is built into the backend for teachers to handle all the course materials and keep in touch with students. Coupon codes are solid for bringing in more people who may want to join the course and the certificates make people feel special when they complete one of your classes.
Course badges keep people on the right track and the commission tools ensure that all of your teachers are getting the right amount of money for the work they put in. Course ratings are nice for people to see which classes are right for them. The online quizzes are timed so that students feel some urgency when going through the quizzes. Along with an easy demo importer, page builder, and slider with overlaying text and buttons, the Clever Course should be bookmarked by anyone who is interested in making an online course website.
Skillfully
We enjoy the Skillfully WordPress theme for quite a few reasons. It’s a clean and modern take on the average learning management system, with a large header to explain what the site is about and a beautiful grid-based gallery right below that. The theme is completely responsive for viewing on smaller devices and it works perfectly with the Restrict Content Pro plugin for when you’d like to block some of the training modules until people pay for it. Keep in mind that Restrict Content Pro is a premium plugin, so you’ll have to pay for the additional charge.
As we stated before, the Skillfully theme is fairly clean and lightweight. Therefore, the majority of the functionality will come from plugins. For example, if you’d like to sell tickets through your website, all you have to do is go with the WooCommerce Tickets extension. Another option is to display and manage events through the Events Calendar Pro plugin. The flyout menu is a thing of beauty and it includes some quality social media buttons to improve your following. Along with that, you get beautiful forms for collecting information and a color picker tool to improve the way your brand looks online.
Edulms
Another LMS for you to look at is called EduLMS. This gem has a powerful admin panel where you manage all of the courses and users from the same spot. For example, if you’d like to grade quizzes or create some questions, all you have to do is go to the same area you always would. All of your courses are consolidated into one area and the grading system is completed when you’ve entered your own metrics. Both the users and the instructors get their own admin panels, so a student could go in there and manage their own courses and see the results they received on recent tests.
An unlimited number of educational homepages are provided for you to play around with. It’s not exactly a multipurpose theme, but it gives you plenty of options for making your brand a reality from the comfort of your own dashboard. You have the opportunity to create unlimited courses, while also selling the courses that people are willing to pay for. In addition to that, you can create quizzes and make certificates for when people are done with their evaluations. Along with shortcodes, sliders, parallax effects, and translation files, the EduLMS WordPress theme has a rather intuitive interface and an impressive set of features to get your hands on.
LMSPress
The LMSPress WordPress theme is yet another learning management theme and it allows you to give away and sell free and premium courses. The events calendar is a rather powerful module on the theme, considering you manage all of the courses from the backend and share them with users who might be interested in joining. Live courses come in handy for when you’d like to really personalize your courses and get in touch with the people who are your students. The LMSPress WordPress theme also provides a beautiful class search, so if someone is interested in a course but is having trouble finding it, they shouldn’t have any problems getting to where they need to go.
Courses, events, lessons, and wishlists are all controlled from the WordPress dashboard, while four widgets enable you to connect with users via social media and other formats. In terms of the lessons, you have the functionality to build course overviews, quizzes, lesson reviews, and quite a few other formats for getting your customers and students ready for the big tests. Social sharing can be completed on any page on the website, making it much easier for you to get the word out about your training. Along with an event location map and a countdown timer in the header, the LMSPress WordPress theme has everything you need to sell courses.
Derrick
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The Derrick WordPress theme comes from the folks at Web Savvy Marketing, and it’s a child theme that works with the Genesis Framework. If you’re not familiar with the Genesis Framework, it’s one of the most reliable frameworks on the market, with tons of options for customization, along with tools for making a lightweight, yet effective layout. The best part about a framework is that the majority of your changes remain the same, even if you change to a different child theme. Anyways, the Derrick WordPress theme includes a beautiful header area with spots for your logo, contact information, and slider. The slider is great for implementing overlaying text and buttons and these images can work to showcase promotions or new classes. Users log in to their accounts at the top or create a new one. All of the profiles are accessed on the frontend and people can customize what their profiles are like, while also managing the courses they have enrolled in.
An email subscription form is installed on the homepage, encouraging visitors to sign up for email updates. Courses, lessons, and memberships are all organized on individual pages, where people can view the details and understand how much they would like to pay for their courses. The entire Derrick WordPress theme is built on a responsive framework, so people can open courses on mobile devices and still check out some of the classwork. The LearnDash LMS plugin is what you’ll use to organize your lessons and present them in a reasonable format. You will need to upload some images, course files, and even videos. All of this is handled through the LearnDash LMS. The WP Achievements plugin works nicely for giving out awards to people in your courses. They are more likely to stick around and pay for additional classes if they are getting some sort of recognition for their work. Along with various social icons, a blog, and various other cool features, the Derrick WordPress theme is a top choice when looking for LMS solutions.
Epicurean Theme