One of the questions which really intrigues users is : Can WordPress be used as an LMS ?
The WordPress being the most secure and versatile CMS platform for the web comes with an incredible ready to use tool set perfect for any Learning platform. Let us see the benefits of using WordPress as an LMS.
You own your data.
Your content, your customers, your reports, its “yours” and you own it. You must have seen emails from unknown sources selling some customer data. Ever wonder how these people get the customer data ? For hackers any SAAS platform is a gold mine because it hosts thousands of sites, hacking 1 site in itself might not be as lucrative as hacking a SAAS platform. Further more, if companies like Facebook, Google can not be trusted with handling of customer data , one can definitely not comment on how SAAS platforms handle their data. If Privacy is top on your list, then WordPress is a great choice.
Free, Open Source & Customisable
WordPress is open source , it is Free nothing beats that. It has been free for over 17 years now and there is no chance of it going dead or converting into a paid platform. It is also the most popular and secure CMS platform. It has a great community of tens of thousands of members and many million sites powered by it, currently 43% cms sites are powered by WordPress alone on entire internet. WordPress is also customisable with thousands of plugins to chose from to customer every aspect of your LMS.
Content Generation
Being a CMS content creation is the core part of WP. It comes with an inbuilt block content generator “Gutenberg” which makes content creation and management easy. The content creation is mostly a drag and drop experience. Even further, there are many page builder plugins to chose from like Elementor page builder, Divi, Breakdance, Beaver, Oxygen which really enhance the process of content creation.
User Categorisation
WordPress comes with inbuilt User Roles and Capability modules. Which allows you to categorise users of your LMS into various roles. You can create roles like Teacher , Student, Parents and more and further combine with functionality. A Teacher can have limited access to modules vs an administrator.
Activity Tracking
While generating content is only half the problem solved, WordPress comes with a plugin called BuddyPress which comes with a module “Activity tracking”. This module records all the user activity that happen in your site. This in true sense is the LRS part of your LMS. Some plugins like PLMS enhance this activity tracking for report building and notifications. This further enhance make your LMS into an LXP ( Learning eXperience Platform ) thereby giving you insights on your customer behaviour.
eCommerce
WordPress comes with an extension called WooCommerce. It is the most popular eCommerce platform plugin called WooCommerce. If you have any plans of selling your courses, or subscriptions then this module really makes things easy. It is Free and also maintained by WordPress.
Marketing, CRM & SEO modules
Since WordPress is a CMS, you can easily find a lot of plugins for Marketing and SEO. Several CRM platforms have customised themselves to better suit the users from WordPress.
Conclusion
Now, while SAAS platforms make things really easy with a one off pricing, they are limited by the number of customisation options. Hosting your LMS / School in a SAAS is just like opening an identical store, one in many. Any competitor can easily compete with you on the same SAAS platform.
The other option is to develop your own LMS platform but just think of how much resources will be spend just to re-create the wheel the one that WordPress already provides.
The last option is to use an eLearning platform like Moodle or Canvas while these options are also great and as maintained for as long as WordPress itself. WordPress has already proven itself to be the best CMS and it is the best because of its code quality, easy to use & customisation options. Finding a developer for WordPress is also relatively easy and cheaper.
So for your next eLearning project consider using WordPress, also give us a try as well.