Adding an LMS to your personal or company website is probably an option that you have considered in the past or possibly more recently. An LMS can be a source of income for your personal website or it company operations in the areas of onboarding or upgrading employees.

At its most basic, LMS stands for Learning Management System. It is a digital learning platform that enables you to develop, deliver, and track training content. With an LMS you will be able to create and store online courses. Multiple courses then let you organize these units into training programs, or specific learning paths, assign content to learners, and monitor their progress and results. LMS usage is an excellent way to provide continuing education and refresher training to your employees or website visitors. Some LMS solutions also permit gamification and awarding of course certificates and badges.

WordPress has several LMS solutions available. Options include LearnPress, a free LMS plugin available in the WordPress plugin repository. LearnPress has available both free and paid add-ons to increase it’s usefulness. Another commercially available option is MemberPress, a WordPress plugin primarily used for developing membership websites but which has an LMS function built into its functionality.

We at Sierra Web Solutions, LLC. have experience with two of the most popular solutions, LearnDash and Sensei Pro. Both of these are available as plugins for WordPress and both are commercially available products which are continually updated and improved.

LearnDash is available for $199/year for one site which provides upgrades and support during the licensing period. If you do not have an ecommerce system on your website LearnDash also has a MemberDash plugin ($199/year for 1 site) that can monetize your content. The plugin also plays well with the WooCommerce plugin.

The Sensei LMS has a free option available with, of course, somewhat limited capabilities. The Pro version is $179/year and includes all of the capabilities that you would probably want in an LMS. Sensei recommends using WooCommerce as a solution for selling courses.

Either LMS solution will permit you to offer your website visitors online training through individual courses or full blown, multi-course certificate programs. If you are looking at a company training program an LMS is an excellent solution to employee onboarding by providing courses on company policies and procedures that are easily updated as necessary and can be used in an employee profile to show training compliance.