Online Courses Addon

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How to Manage Courses & Lessons using ARMember Online Courses Addon

Important Note:This add-on will work with ARMember Version 5.9 or greater.

Steps For Installation And Activation

You can install the plugin in the following two ways. and ARMember Course plugin requires ARMember Plugin installed and active.

New install via FTP

  1. Download the plugin and extract it. You will find a directory armembercourses.
  2. In your WordPress installation directory, upload armembercourses to wp-content/plugins/
  3. Activate the ARMember - Online Courses Addon plugin through the Plugins menu from WordPress admin panel.

New install via the WordPress Uploader

  1. Download the plugin.
  2. Log in to your WordPress admin panel
  3. Go to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload
  4. Click on “choose file” and browse the download package. When the plugin uploads successfully, click on Activate Plugin.

Manage Courses

Online Course is a functionality that provides the facility to add free or paid courses. For example, If you want to provide teaching through your website, then you can set the course with the subjects of which you are sharing the knowledge. You can set the course to be accessed for free or by receiving some fees. In this case you can use Course functionality.

Manage Courses

Add Category

The category will help you to divide the different courses. For example, if there are various different information topics to provide the information for, then the topics will become a Category and as the name of the addon itself, you can set the course for the topics. To add a new category, go to ARMember -> Manage Courses, and from here click on the Manage Category button. From the popup, click on the + Add Category button, and set the title of the category and the description of the category.

Manage Category

Add Course

After adding a category, now add a free/paid course which will contain the main information. You can add the course as the Text/HTML file, a video file, or an audio file To add a new course, go to ARMember -> Manage Courses, and from here click on the +Add Courses button.

add new course

  • Add the course name and description.
  • Select the category, under which the particular course can be purchased and accessed
  • Set the tags(you can set the main points which includes in the course). Tags can be easily added, just add the text and hit enter, and the tags will be added within seconds.
  • Set the course type between free and paid. If you want the course to be paid, select the Buy Now options and set the price for the course.
  • Now, set the duration of the course till which the members will be able to access the course. Under the Duration Type option. If you select the Lifetime option, then the course will be displayed to the members for an unlimited time bound.
  • Similarly, if you set the course access Duration Type to Fixed Duration, then you will be able to set the duration in Days, Weeks, Months and Years
  • Now, upload an image which will displayed as the cover of the course and set the instructor (ex: author) of the course.
  • You can set the course status too, so after the course is created, and if you wish to deactive the course temporarily in the midway, then you can change the status of the Course between active and deactive simply by enabling and disabling the switch for Course Status
  • Save the setup

Course Sections

After the course and the categories is configures, now you will be able to add the content of the course, the sections/lessons which will include all the information of the course. To add the sections/lessons to the course, hover over the course and click on the Course Sections option to add/manage the courses.

Add course sections

Add Section

Click on the + Add Section button and add the name name in the “Enter Section Name” textbox and hit the save button. The section will be added on the spot.

Add Lesson

Add sections

After the sections are added, add the main content, the lessons. You can add the lessons as per the following steps:
  • Click on the + Add Lesson button.
  • Select the Section from the dropdown under which the lesson will be displayed.
  • Enter the name and the description of the lesson
  • You can set the lesson type in 3 different types:

1. Text/HTML

Only the content set in the description section will be displayed

2. Video

You can upload a direct video, set the video URL or embed the video code

3. Audio

You can upload a direct audio, set the audio URL or embed the audio code

  • If you want to set the Preview of the lesson, then enable the Allow Preview Lesson and set the preview depending on the Lesson Type selected.
After adding a lesson and done with setting it in the section, you can add later change and add a lesson to any sections as per your requirement.

Add new lesson

You can drag and set the order of the sections as well as the lessons inside the sections according to your requirement.

Complete_course_configuration

Course Settings

Go to ARMember->General Settings->Course Settings, from here you will be able to configure the front-end options to display the courses.

online_course_setting

Courses Slug

Set the slug for the page where you will be able to view the list of the courses as the slug is the unique identifying part of any web address through which you will be access the page.

Course Category Slug

Set the slug for the page where you will be able to view the list of the categories which includes different courses.

Course Tags Slug

For accessing the content via the tags, you can set the slug according to your requirement.

Courses Per Page

From this option, you will be able to set the total number of course to be displyed in the page.

Suppose there are total of 6 courses available at your site, then the course list will be divided into two pages, so the first page will display the list of 3 course and similarly, next page will display the list of other 3 courses.

You can set minimum 3 Courses to be displayed within a single page.

Courses Lessons Revealing

Online course provides a facility to set the access of the lessons to the members directly and at particular times.

You can set revealing time of the course by 3 different methods:

  1. Always Available

    2. If this option is selected, then the members will be able to access lessons from the list.

  2. After Completion of current lesson

    3. This option lets you to set the new lesson to be accessed from the list only after the 90% of the content is viewed from the previous lesson.

    Note: This option is only available in video and audio content uploaded or url type.

  3. Every x days

    4. This options lets you to set the new Lessons of the course to be accessed from the list after the x days of purchasing the course.

online_course_configure_course_settings

Certificate Setting

Online course Addon provides a facility to set provide the certificates to the members when they complete a particular course.

On completing each course, the member will get an access a new certificate in which the members will be acknowledged that they have completed the particular course.

The online course addon provide 3 different options to choose a certificate design from.

You can hover over the certificate and click on the Edit button to start editing the certificate.

  1. Title

    2. Set the title of the certificate.

  2. Footer message

    3. Set the message to share at the footer of the certificate.

  3. Background Frame

    4. You can set the background frame to the design according to your requirement.

  4. Logo

    5. You may set the logo of your institution according to your requirement.

  5. Signature

    6. Course addon provides a facility to set a unique signature which may help the members to be acknowledged as valid certification.

Edit Certificate Options

After configuring the certificate with the Frame, Logo, and Signature, you can check how the certificate will look like by simply hovering over the certificate template and clicking on the preview icon.

The certificate design selected from the course settings will be assigned to the members after the completion of the course.

course_preview_certificate

Now let’s see how the courses can be accessed by the Customer.

When the Online Course addon is activated, at the time, two pages course & My courses are created by default.

Go to the URL https://yourwebsiteurl.com/courses and you will find the list of all the course.

Members will only be able to access the list of the course when they are logged in to the website.

From the page, you can search/filter any course by directly searching the course name or filter the course based on the category and the author of the course.

select_course_list

To view the overview of the course, click on the particular course. From here, you will be able to view the cover image, the section of the course.

Next to cover image of the course, you can find the summary and the price of the course along with the purchase button. The Summary will display the total duration of the course, total lectures, category of the course along with Author’s name and the Course Tags.

If there is any preview set for the lesson, then the members can simply click on the preview button and the preview of the lesson will be displayed to them.

overview_of_course

To purchase the course, click on the Enroll Now button and after that the customer will be able to purchase the course from the same payment gateways which you set for the paid post setup to purcahse a paid post.

After purchasing the course, the members will be able to access Course Curriculum panel, from where you can choose a leesons from the section available in the course.

course_curriculum_sections_lessons

After marking the lessons one by one as completed, the progress bar will calculate the percentage of the course that the member has completed.

completing_lessons

When completing all the lessons (whole course), the members can go to https://yourwebsiteurl.com/my_courses from where they can download a certificate for completing the whole course.

My Courses

Members will get a new certificate each time when they complete a single course.

Email Notifications

ARMember allows you to enable and configure email notifications for different activities. To configure email for course completion please go to ARMember->Email Notification.

Click on Add New Response you will get a popup open to configure email notifications where you have option of course completion mail in Message To Be Sent input as you can see in following image.

Add New Response

Modify Common Labels & Messages

You will able to change the labels and messages easily from ARMember->General Settings->Common Messages page that you can change the “Enroll Course Button”, “Duration”, “Lectures”, “Course Category”, “Course Tag”, and other heading labels according to your requirements.

common_messages

Course Shortcodes

[arm_all_courses]

Use this shortcode to display the list of all the courses available at your website. Also, please note that the list will only be displayed when the member is looged in.

Possible Arguments:
layout_view Display the list in a Grid or List view
title Display the title of the course list heading
hide_title If you want to hide the title, then pass the parameter True, else False. The default parameter will be False
search_placeholder Set the label of the placeholder inside the search textbox
category_placeholder Set the label of the placeholder for the Select Category dropdown
author_placeholder Set the label of the placholder for the Select Author dropdown
no_result_message Set the message to be displayed, if there are no courses in the list

[arm_my_courses]

Use this shortcode to display the list of all the purchased courses by the members at your website. Also, please note that the list will only be displayed when the member is looged in.

Possible Arguments:
layout_view Display the list in a Grid or List view
title Display the title of the course list heading
hide_title If you want to hide the title, then pass the parameter True, else False. The default parameter will be False
search_placeholder Set the label of the placeholder inside the search textbox
category_placeholder Set the label of the placeholder for the Select Category dropdown
author_placeholder Set the label of the placholder for the Select Author dropdown
no_result_message Set the message to be displayed, if there are no courses in the list