2 Reasons for Using a WordPress LMS

By: Justin Ferriman • August 5, 2014
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two2The learning management system market is a very crowded space. There are new offerings popping up every single day, each boasting a slew of features making them quite attractive.

Truth is many of these solutions are pretty well done. They are built with the learner and administrator in mind in the effort to make the online course delivery and management process enjoyable.

There is one thing that most providers struggle to deal with. It is something we have come to know working in the elearning space and during the development of our learning management system.

A learning management system is defined differently by every organization in terms of which features are priority.

Why WordPress is the Answer

Each person has different needs out of an LMS. Some need it for internal training, some for state required training, others for selling courses on a personal site, and others still for school classrooms. Each one of these areas could be subdivided further with an additional set of unique feature requirements.

It is because of this reason why WordPress makes a fantastic learning management system. In fact, there are two very attractive reasons why WordPress is the answer to this very common problem:

  1. WordPress is easily extendable
  2. WordPress is easily customized

To elaborate, the first benefit is that WordPress is easily extendable. Need a feature? Hop on over to WordPress.org to search for a free plugin to give you the capability you need.

For example, LearnDash does not have a built-in forum for users to interact. Truth is, this was done on purpose because there is fantastic free forum in bbpress that can be leveraged. There is no sense in us re-inventing the wheel as bbpress is an extremely well made solution that can be integrated into any WordPress site.

There are thousands of plugins that can give you extra features. This allows you to grow your platform to your organizational needs. However, there aren’t plugins for everything, which brings us to the second benefit – WordPress can be easily customized.

There thousands upon thousands of WordPress developers out there, all capable of developing additional features if you are unable to find one that is very specific to your organization. You could post your project onto one of the many freelance job sites and receive hundreds of interested developers in just a few hours.

In the end, when you use a pre-packaged solution on another platform, you are kind of stuck with their development cycle. With WordPress, you are in complete control. Need a feature? Simply find a plugin, and if it doesn’t exist, have it built. You ultimately get complete control over your learning experience with a WordPress LMS.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter