After months of careful planning and deliberation, we’re thrilled to announce that WP101 is now powered by the powerful LifterLMS learning management plugin for WordPress!
We think you’re going to really going to enjoy learning WordPress with the help of the new features that LifterLMS brings to our site.
We’ll be able to better interact with you as you make your way through our tutorials, providing timely information and helpful resources along the way. You’ll be able to track your progress, earning badges and certificates for completing lessons and courses. And we’ll be able to bring new courses online more quickly!
Why is this change necessary?
First, let me share a little background. This is just the third time we’ve changed platforms since we launched WP101 in 2008. For the past several years, this site has been powered by a highly customized integration with an obscure recurring billing service.
While this system has enabled us to offer simple access to our WordPress tutorial videos as part of a membership, it lacked support for discount coupons and other basic functionality. More importantly, we’ve been unable to provide the type of learning experience we really want to deliver. Until now.
Today, WP101 serves more than 25,000 members, so it’s no small challenge to migrate to a new membership plugin. Thankfully, we benefited from the trusted advice of our good friend and long-time coach, Chris Lema. Together, we spent more than a year carefully evaluating the many options available today.
So we were absolutely thrilled to have finally discovered LifterLMS, a powerful (and free) learning management plugin for WordPress. Not only was it the first plugin that checked all the boxes for our needs, but it also quickly became apparent that the creators truly share our passion for online education.
In particular, we really resonated with their focus on restoring human interaction to online learning, something that is conspicuously absent from most online courses today.
You see, we don’t just want you to watch our videos. We want to acknowledge your progress and interact with you as you make your way through the lessons. We want to answer your questions and help you accomplish your goals for learning WordPress in the first place.
LifterLMS gives us the tools to serve you even better.
Here are some of the new features we think you’ll love…
Track your progress. The all-new “My Courses” page shows you the courses you’ve enrolled in, with a visual indicator of your progress through each one. Return at any time and pick up right where you left off.
The new “My Courses” page in action.
Earn badges and certificates. No more watching videos in a vacuum! Now you’ll earn badges and certificates for completing lessons and courses. Print and share these to verify that you’ve completed our training. Or just enjoy the rewards as an acknowledgment of your progress.
Timely help when it matters most. LifterLMS enables us to send helpful tips or links to additional resources based on lessons you’ve recently completed. This will help us strike up a conversation as you progress through each course. We’ll be able to answer any questions you might have at that point, or recommend related resources, products and services you might find helpful.
Clearly-defined courses. We’ve reorganized our entire tutorial library into individual courses, making it easier to find the specific training you need.
New courses, finally! Best of all, this model will enable us to bring new courses online more quickly. For example, we’ve partnered with noted WooCommerce expert, Daniel Espinoza, to create an in-depth course for that popular e-commerce plugin. When it’s released, you’ll be able to purchase just that course — or any of our future courses — à la carte, if you like. Better yet, buy a Lifetime Membership and get access to all our future courses for one single payment!
These guys are good!
We really want to thank the stellar team at codeBox — the creators of LifterLMS — for handling the “heavy lifting.” They not only migrated all of our site content and member data, but also provided strategic advice and much-needed encouragement along the way to help us better serve you — our members.
From the first video conference with the entire team in January, it was clear that these guys really love online education. Joshua and Chris even host a podcast where they share their best advice for creating effective online learning experiences.
If you’re interested in building your own online courses, we highly recommend LifterLMS. The plugin is 100% free, but their Boost service is perfect for individuals who don’t have time to set it up or don’t want to mess with the technical side of things.
You’ll not only benefit from the well thought-out features of the LifterLMS plugin itself, but also the wealth of knowledge and experience these guys bring to the table!
Go ahead. Log in and check out your new profile page!
We’ve already migrated your account to the new system and enrolled you in our current courses. You’ll enjoy access to the same video tutorials you had before this move.
When you’ve finished watching a video lesson, simply mark it as complete. You’ll be automatically redirected to the next lesson in the course. When you’ve finished all the lessons in a course, you’ll earn a badge for your profile, and a gorgeous certificate of completion you can print and share!
Of course, you can still post your questions in the members-only Q&A Forum and get answers from the creator of WP101, Shawn Hesketh, as well as other members of the community.
So log into your new “My Courses” page now and check out our latest WordPress tutorial videos. If it’s been a while, you might be surprised by what you’ll learn this time around!
Never stop learning!
Nice one Shawn, this move is great! But is there an option to download the videos for online watching?
Thanks, Rupert! For the time being, our videos are only available for viewing on our site. We would love to provide downloadable videos for offline viewing, but there is no way to protect our video files from being freely redistributed if we do so. Sadly, some nefarious individuals would exploit this to their advantage. For now, streaming from our site is the best option.
You write that LifterLMS “checked all the boxes for our needs” – I would be interested: what where the things you specifically demanded from your LMS?
Hi Julius,
While considering different LMS plugins, we were looking for these key “ingredients”:
• Support for payments via both PayPal and credit cards, via Stripe.
• Super-simple user interface for creating new courses and lessons.
• Award badges and certificates upon completion of courses.
• Customizable page templates to accommodate our existing site design.
• Support for members-only Q&A forum.
• Detailed analytics on conversions as well as student progress.
• Support for selling courses à la carte, in addition to memberships.
• Integration with MailChimp for email newsletters.
• Engagement emails triggered by student’s course progress.
• Stellar support from a team who knows WordPress!
LifterLMS was the first plugin that checked all those boxes. The other leading competitor was LearnDash. Both are excellent. In the end, two things tipped the scales for us.
First, I really dislike features the rely on 3rd party integrations. The more moving pieces, the higher the risk for things breaking when one of those components is updated. I prefer the all-in-one approach of LifterLMS. Features we depend on, like email engagements, don’t rely on a 3rd party service like InfusionSoft or MailChimp. Rather, they’re created and sent directly by LifterLMS. The same thing applies to badges and certificates; some other solutions rely on integration with BadgeOS to power that critical functionality.
But more importantly, LifterLMS is dedicated to putting the “human touch” back into online learning, something that is conspicuously missing from the majority of online learning solutions. Unlike many course creators who are more interested in generating revenue from their online course, I derive the most enjoyment from interacting with our members and students, answering their questions, and providing real-world guidance. LifterLMS enables me to have that level of interaction with our audience. And in the end, that’s what matters most to me.
Honestly, you should carefully consider LearnDash if you’re looking to build an online learning site like WP101.com. But I strongly recommend LifterLMS — both the product, and the dedicated team behind it.
Oh, and did I mention that LifterLMS also offers a “Done For You” service? They’ll set up LifterLMS for you and help you create your first course, providing welcome advice along the way, and helping ensure your course runs as smoothly as possible for your students. We hired them to help us migrate WP101, and it was well worth every penny. In addition to their technical expertise, the advice along the way was invaluable.
Hope this helps!
I have owned DAP/Digital Access Pass for over 7 years and never used it. Every time I tried to follow their directions and start to put things together I would end up wanting to cry. I finally realized that is not the solution for me, even though I have paid over 700.00 for it over those 7 years. ( You have to pay for support, so I bought a 4 year package after the initial years expired. I have build over 200 WP websites for clients so I can usually pick things up fairly quickly, but that DAP program just did not do it for me. Too complicated. Time to let it go.
I downloaded lifterlms and had to upgrade my php, which is a huge deal and moving servers on one of my reseller accounts, but the other one I found out, it was just one click. So days later after that I have installed lifterlms.
I really like how it looks and how it is set up and laid out. This is something I can use. Also like you, the joy I get from teaching WP to my clients is in the interactions. Thanks for your endorsement of this plugin.
Hey Shawn,
Can you explain the “human touch” you are referring to, here?
‘LifterLMS is dedicated to putting the “human touch” back into online learning, something that is conspicuously missing from the majority of online learning solutions.’
Hi Mark,
We’re able to use LifterLMS’ automated engagements to send timely messages to students at critical points throughout the course. For example, we send a quick email when a student completes a particularly complicated lesson, asking them if they have any questions. This helps our students to know that we’re here, standing by, and ready to answer their questions. And that sparks helpful, two-way conversations that are missing from most online courses.