The Best LMS Plugin to Create and Sell Courses Online

Learn about the best WordPress LMS plugins to create and sell courses online in this episode of the LMScast podcast hosted by Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. LifterLMS is the most powerful, flexible, independently-owned-and-operated learning management system for WordPress and in this episode we dive into the 6.0 launch and what that brings for online course creators using the LifterLMS plugin.

LifterLMS 6.0 had a lot of focus on the certificate builder. If you’re not already using certificates, we recommend it as a great way to add a  element and a motivation element to your online learning content. Certificates can be awarded when a learner completes an individual course, or if a user completes a group of courses similar to how an advanced degree program works using the course track feature LifterLMS offers.

The most powerful certificate building system available inside and outside of WordPress is in the 6.0 release. You can build any kind of certificate you can imagine leveraging the power of the modern WordPress block editor. We added a new custom block of our own called the Certificate Title Block so that you can kind of create a fancy intro top part of your certificate.

There’s also an update to the LifterLMS PDFs product, where you can allow users to download certificates as PDFs without the need for a PDF Layer integration which used to be required. There’s also PDF generation techonlgoy on orders where learners can export a PDF invoice for tax purposes.

On the LifterLMS YouTube channel if you search for “LifterLMS 6.0”, you’ll find a visual demo fo the certificate builder. Feel free to email if you have any questions to [email protected]. We do live calls which you can find on our community events page here. There’s a phone number on the website. We do things a little differently around here at LifterLMS.

And at LifterLMS.com you can learn more about new developments and how you can use LifterLMS to build online courses and membership sites. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. Thank you for joining us!

Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett:
You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high-value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. Stay to the end. I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Chris Badgett:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. My name’s Chris Badgett. And today, I am not joined by a special guest. This is a solo episode with just a kind of overview of the best LMS plugin to create and sell courses online. If you’ve been around for a while, you know that tool as LifterLMS. Just recently, LifterLMS released LifterLMS 6.0, which further demonstrates the LifterLMS innovation training, I like to call it, and it’s been quite the journey.

Chris Badgett:
It’s almost eight years that LifterLMS has been in the market for people building WordPress LMS sites for clients or DIY experts who want to create and sell things online, like courses, coaching program, remote learning schools, company training portals, all that kind of stuff. LifterLMS is the most powerful, flexible, independently-owned-and-operated learning management system for WordPress. I’m super proud of the team, especially here, the development team who developed this 6.0 innovation, which I’m just going to talk about briefly. This isn’t going to be a long episode, but just so you’re in the loop of what’s new.

Chris Badgett:
LifterLMS 6.0 had a lot of focus on the certificate builder. If you’re not using certificates, it’s a great way to add a gamification element, kind of a motivation element to your online learning. Certificates can be simple, just like a certificate that’s earned when somebody completes an individual course, or if people complete a group of courses, like for an advanced degree, LifterLMS has a feature called Course Tracks, so you can kind of group courses that create a degree program. When people earn a degree, they get a certificate.

Chris Badgett:
So LifterLMS 6.0 includes the most powerful certificate building system available inside and outside of WordPress. Essentially, you can build any kind of certificate you can imagine. It uses the modern WordPress block editor. We added a new custom block of our own called the Certificate Title Block so that you can kind of create a fancy intro top part of your certificate. I know what I’m talking about is somewhat visual in nature. So if you just go to LifterLMS YouTube channel and just do a search for LifterLMS 6.0, you’ll find some videos about the certificate builder.

Chris Badgett:
We added a bunch of sizes so that if people are going to print them out or you just wanted to display it in certain sizes, both the European scale and also in kind of the standard dimensions. Different ways to look at the sizing. One of the coolest things with LifterLMS 6.0 is the PDF generation. So PDFs where people can view their certificate that they earned on your WordPress LMS website, but they can also, if you’re using the LifterLMS PDFs add-on, generate a PDF version of their certificate that they can then download, email to somebody, share it out.

Chris Badgett:
We also have certificate sharing. So if you want to just give somebody a link so that a user can share their certificate with somebody and then that person could download the PDF version, there’s all kinds of different options in how it works. This was quite the innovation over at LifterLMS HQ. In our earlier version of LifterLMS PDFs, it required a third party PDF generation software integration to be able to function. But the talented development team over at LifterLMS found a way to generate the PDFs directly on the website with no third party dependency required, which is really awesome. So that is a great feature.

Chris Badgett:
While we were in there working on the PDFs, we also added the PDF generation technology to orders. It’s very common when somebody orders… We see it at LifterLMS. When you have a European customer particularly, sometimes Canadians, they will buy the software, buy the LifterLMS software, and then they will ask for a PDF invoice for tax purposes. So we created that innovation for you. So if you need to generate PDFs of your order receipts, you can do that.

Chris Badgett:
We also added the ability for people to download their grades, their grade data, from the student dashboard. Think of it kind of like if somebody wants to collect their transcript of learning and have a PDF, a portable version of that, that they can keep or give to somebody else to prove that they did the work or got a certain grade and all that kind of stuff. That has been included too.

Chris Badgett:
One of the other great things about the new certificate system is the certificate templates. So now you can work through templates so you can better create and manage certificates at scale. We also introduced the ability to manually award a certificate. So if, for whatever reason, you need to give a particular person a certificate, maybe there was something that happened in your learning opportunity that happens outside of the LMS that they need to complete, or something like that, or maybe, for whatever reason, somebody didn’t hit the “Mark Complete” button correctly or something and you want to just give somebody a certificate. You have that whole system there.

Chris Badgett:
And we also added that templating ability to the achievement badges, which is awesome. In addition, we added to the LifterLMS graphics pack. So if you have the Universe Bundle or the Infinity Bundle level of LifterLMS, if you go to your account and log into the LifterLMS website and you go check out the graphics pack, we added something like 18 new or 17 new certificate background designs. And inside those, all the… I think it’s eight different sizes per design and orientation so that you can use those certificate backgrounds. It’s just going to speed up your implementation, and no need to design a custom background, unless you want to. Kind of like the border that is around and behind the certificate. That’s what I’m talking about there.

Chris Badgett:
So those were added to the LifterLMS graphics pack to make that super easy for you. So just head on over to lifterlms.com. And again, if you want to just see a quick visual on what I’m talking about here, just go to the LifterLMS YouTube channel, type in LifterLMS 6.0 certificates, and you’ll find some video tutorials. And we have documentation and everything on our website. So that’s what I had for you today. We’re going to get back to our scheduled programming of interviews to help you level up across the areas that we try to support you in at LifterLMS in addition to software, which is being an expert in developing in that way, of course being a technologist, but also being an entrepreneur, a teacher, and a community builder.

Chris Badgett:
So thanks for checking out this solo show. Just super proud of LifterLMS 6.0. If you haven’t gotten your hands on LifterLMS yet, maybe now is the time to do that. If you go to the LifterLMS website, you can also try everything we make before you buy so you can see all this certificate system in action, if I’ve piqued your curiosity, and even if you haven’t thought about creating a certificate. Maybe you should, even if your course is not necessarily like a continuing education thing or something where people need to have a certificate to get a certain kind of job or something like that. Even more kind of hobby-based or casual or just interest-based courses, you could just add a certificate for gamification. And sometimes, people kind of create their own fun certification name, or it doesn’t have to be always just like a serious academic certificate. Same with achievement badges.

Chris Badgett:
If you haven’t used the LifterLMS engagement system, just check it out. Gamifying your site can actually help with student motivation. Make it interesting, make it a little more fun. So go check out the best LMS plugin to create and sell online courses with WordPress and without WordPress. It’s called LifterLMS. It’s a leader in the space. We’re getting a lot of people switching into Lifter, either from a kind of inferior WordPress stack or coming over from the hosted solutions that they’ve just kind of outgrown. They want more power, control, customizability, better support, more of a community around the project.

Chris Badgett:
LifterLMS is a special piece of software. So go check it out. Go check out 6.0, the new stuff. And if you have any questions about the software, anything we talked about today, just head on over to the website. One of the things that makes LifterLMS more approachable is, we’ve got live chat there. You’ve got email. So just send an email to [email protected]. We do live calls. There’s a phone number on the website. We do things a little differently around here at LifterLMS. So back to our scheduled interview program in the next episode. Thanks for hearing me out about LifterLMS 6.0. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. Take care.

Chris Badgett:
And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over at lifterlms.com/gift. Go to lifterlms.com/gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.