How To Install LearnDash On Website [Ultimate Guide 2023]

If you are starting a company that specializes in online courses, then you can’t go wrong with setting up a LearnDash account.

This platform is great for converting people visiting your website into students that want to learn from one of your courses. But how can you integrate LearnDash into your website?

Well, when you get set up with LearnDash, you can very easily integrate it into your website.

LearnDash comes with a set of plugins, widgets, and a menu settings tab that makes it much easier for your user to access your online courses directly through your website.

But how can you get LearnDash up and running straight away? How can you monetize your courses? How can you achieve the best presentation possible for your courses?

Well, we have a comprehensive guide on how to install LearnDash on website, so you don’t miss out on any reviews from your customers.

What Is LearnDash?

LearnDash is an online learning platform that allows you to sell courses to potential customers.

This comes with an easy-to-navigate interface, altering the buttons and widgets on your WordPress website to facilitate the selling of these things a lot more effectively.

There are various add-ons that you can get with LearnDash, some of them you can pay for while others are free.

However, you will not need to use all of the add-ons, and trying to install them all will result in compatibility issues further down the line.

LearnDash will allow you to customize the widgets on your website so that you can include buttons for essays, assignments, quizzes, and courses.

But how can you optimize LearnDash for your needs? Well, we’ve compiled a step-by-step guide for implementing LearnDash on your system and getting the best experience out of it for you and your particular business.

What Do I Need To Install Before My LearnDash Account?

First off, you will need to set up a WordPress site. This is the primary site that LearnDash plugs into and modifies. Here is what you need to do to set up your WordPress site:

1.  Purchase a domain for the course builder plugin

2.  Purchase web hosting

3.  Install WordPress

Now, to do all three at the same time might seem very daunting and time-consuming, and you’d be right. However, there is a website that will allow you to do all three in one go and that’s SiteGround.

This is a WordPress host that is renowned for its great security and customer friendliness.

This is a website that has been designed for your WordPress accounts and will give you great bandwidth, which is very important when trying to gain customers.

This also comes with an all-in-one toolkit that will get you started with setting up a good WordPress account.

This comes with a website starter pack too, which makes setting up your WordPress account super easy.

There are many payment plans that you can set up on SiteGrounds, some of which offer you some very unique plugins.

For the beginner package, you’ll have to pay $14.99 and it will allow ten thousand viewers to visit your website.

However, there are a few other website hosting platforms that offer you different deals, which will be very useful if you expect large numbers of visitors to your website daily.

If you are looking to grow your website to epic proportions, then you can always sign up with GrowBig, which offers a super-fast broadband speed through their SuperCacher plugin.

The whole package is worth $24.99.

The best thing about these SiteGround packages is that you can get some of the best advice for starting your website from some of their experts.

If you are new to the world of e-commerce, then their help will be invaluable to you.

If you want to pull out all the stops for your website hosting, then you can always go for the largest package, which is the GoGeek Plan, worth around $40, which will provide you with the largest amount of bandwidth for hosting the largest amount of users.

Once you have installed SiteGrounds, it will give you the option of choosing between these 3 packages.

You can also preinstall WordPress through SiteGrounds so that it is loaded with all the necessary plugins when you first open the program.

So now that you’ve done all the preparatory work, you can get on with the business of setting up your WordPress site and getting your LearnDash plugin installed immediately.

Installing Your LearnDash Plugin

You’ll need to be able to access your WordPress dashboard to activate your LearnDash plugins. Although you will first need to make sure that you have purchased LearnDash so that it appears in your plugins section.

You can download the LearnDash zip file from the accounts page of the LearnDash website once you have purchased it.

Taking a look at the list of options on the right-hand side of your WordPress site, click on the ‘Plugins’ section.

This will then give you a prompt to unzip your LearnDash software. Click ‘Install Now’ and wait for LearnDash to modify your WordPress site.

When this is done, you should be able to customize your WordPress LMS plugin with LearnDash plugins.

Install A Theme That Is Compatible With LearnDash

One of the first things that you’ll want to make sure is set up are all the LearnDash features that you can access from your WordPress, making the user’s journey through your website to your courses as effort-free as possible.

Having the right theme is an important part of this process. You’ll need to make sure that you have a navigation tool and menu that looks great and can be negotiated very easily.

With LearnDash, you’ll be able to format your website so that you can have all the information necessary for your visitor available on the front course page of your website.

There are many different themes that you can choose from, some of them free, others available for a subscription fee.

To access your themes, you’ll want to click on the ‘Appearance’ tab on the left-hand side of your screen. Then go into ‘Themes’ and ‘Add New’.

As an example, we’re going to suggest that you use the Astra theme, as this is a free option.

Once you have gone into the themes section, then you will need to specify what kind of settings you want for your Astra theme.

Configuring Your Theme

There are a few ways that you can determine how your website looks through the Astra theme.

LearnDash has a whole library of pre-made themes that you can select from that are available in different categories.

If you are having difficulty setting up your themes, then LearnDash comes with an academy where you can learn all the basics on how to get your LearnDash-compatible website up and running.

This is a free online course too.

All you need to do to get these starter plugins is go into the ‘Appearances’ tab and then click on ‘Starter Templates’. This will then display all the options that you can have for your templates.

However, these themes can only be a starting block that you can build upon.

You can alter it to whatever degree that you want, as WordPress will allow you to customize everything from the color scheme of your website to the typography.

All you need to do to activate these changes is go into the ‘Appearances’ section and click on the ‘Customize’ subheading.

Once you have made any changes to your WordPress, you will be able to see them instantly in real-time.

Once you have customized your WordPress site to your exact specifications, then you are ready to start selling your courses online through LearnDash.

Course Creation In LearnDash

Go to the LearnDash tab and select the ‘Add Courses’ button.

Once you have done this, you’ll have the option of giving your paid course a name. We would recommend that you make your course clear and very easy to understand.

You should include all the right keywords in your title so that people can search for your course more easily.

Now you can start to build your course. This means structuring your lesson plan and allowing you to set up assignments and quizzes that will be relevant to your topic.

Once you have created your lesson, you can always hit the ‘edit’ button to alter the structure of your course. This will allow you to add more course content when you feel it is relevant.

This is very important when you are learning the ropes of your course.

One of the most important things that you’ll need to learn is how to install a payment gateway that will allow you to start charging your students for your lessons.

Using The Course Grid Plugin For Advertising Many Courses

If you are going to be setting up many different LearnDash LMS courses (many people want to offer a whole ‘school’ so that they can offer a range of courses) in a manner that is very easy to understand, which is why you need a decent layout.

To create courses with the grid add-on, you’ll need to go into the LearnDash LMS (Learning Management System) and select the ‘Add Ons’ feature.

Once you have installed this feature, you will be able to set out your courses in blocks that you and your students can click on to reveal the course structure.

Creating Menus For Your Students

Your WordPress account will come with its LearnDash LMS menu, but this might not be that great if you want them to access specific features of your courses.

This is why you might want to create custom menus for yourself.

To do this, go to your plugins tab and select the Nav Menu Roles plugin. Once this has been activated then go to the ‘Appearances’ tab and then navigate to the ‘Menus’ portion of the website.

This will allow you to edit parts of your menu so that your students can only see certain portions of whatever course you are offering.

For example, if you are wanting to advertise your courses to a target audience that is outside of your WordPress account, then you can select the ‘Logged Out Users’ as your core demographic.

However, if you want to home in on your students exclusively, then change this setting to ‘Logged In Users’.

Setting Up A Commerce Account

Obviously one of the main reasons why you have set up a LearnDash account is so that you can start monetizing your skills and helping teach other people.

So, to accept payments, you’ll need to set up what is called a WooCommerce account.

This will enable you to have much more flexibility when it comes to payment options. Allowing greater diversity of payment will encourage more students to visit your website.

To install WooCommerce, all you need to do is go into the plugins section on your WordPress and activate this software feature.

There are a few different features that this will enable you to do.

You’ll be able to allow your students to log into their accounts from the checkout page, you can also prevent people from paying if they are logged out of your LearnDash account.

You can also create products on your website that will allow you to sell your course pages. To do this, all you need to do is go into the ‘Products’ section and opt to add a new product to your course. 

This is a great option if you want to sell bundles and offer discounts to any prospective students to encourage them to sign up for one or more of your courses.

You’ll need to make sure that you repeat this process for all the courses that you are trying to sell.

Conclusion

We hope that this guide to setting up a LearnDash account will help you get started in selling your own online courses. Check out our review of Learndash to find out more about the features it offers.

There are plenty of other add-ons and options that you can activate to make your courses more appealing to prospective students, you just need to employ trial and error to see what works best for you.