How to Start An Online School: Best WordPress Plugins & Themes
Start an online school today! Discover the best plugins and themes to create an engaging learning experience for your students.
Are you thinking about launching an online school but unsure where to begin? Our latest video covers everything from choosing a suitable theme to selecting must-have plugins for your educational platform. We break down each component in easy-to-follow steps so you can build an engaging space for learners of all ages. Ready to take control of your educational future? Hit play, and let’s get started.
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 98. In this episode, we will discuss education and how to start online school for a school, a college, or a private, or public institution looking to do online education. We have a great deal of experience in this at WP-Tonic, and I’ve got my regular co-host, Kirk, who also has a lot of experience in the corporate educational area and WordPress. We think we’ve got a lot of things to help you make the right decision. I’ve done some surveys and extra research for this show. A lot of the content is a bit outdated when building your solution on WordPress, which is more cost-effective than going to a pure enterprise-level SaaS solution, which is a bit out of the scope of many schools and private institutions.
[00:01:57.060] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got my great host with me, Kirk. Kirk, would you like to introduce yourself quickly?
[00:02:02.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, Kurt von Ahnen with MananaNoMas. MananaNoMasfocuses primarily on membership and learning websites. We specialize in helping enterprise clients migrate away from purpose-built SaaS ugly scorn websites and put that material into WordPress. So this will be fun today, Jonathan. Thank you.
[00:02:20.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, Kurt is the scorned man, as I say. You need to do that. You need a little picture of yourself. And I did it, the scorned man. So, let’s do an overview of the subject. Where would you begin? I think you wanted initially to talk about the curriculum and that area first, didn’t you?
[00:02:52.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think this is a massive part of the conversation, Jonathan because if we don’t lay the foundation or the groundwork for where this conversation starts and ends, we can go all over the place.
[00:03:05.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Are you saying I might start to weave?
[00:03:07.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
You might weave and Waffle a bit.
[00:03:10.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Never.
[00:03:11.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
One of the first steps when you’re thinking like, Okay, we’re going to create a school, we’re going to create this. I don’t care if it’s an independent auto mechanics education site, bicycle repair site, how to knit, or whatever. If you are thinking of a school, especially I believe, homeschooling, you have to know at the beginning of the project whether you are going to take the responsibility to create your curriculum and your learning content or are looking to pre-purchase someone else’s curriculum and import that to whatever platform you decide to build. And if you’re going to buy curriculum, you want to know what format that’s in so that you can make by that instead of hitting that. If you don’t do that thinking first, if you don’t do that planning, designing, and strategy first, and you build something and it’s not compliant, then you end up on the back end with custom design or custom development or something to try and fix the error.
[00:04:12.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Based on your experience, Because you got Scorm, you’ve got HTML5 and more modern formats developed after Scorm. Scorm is still one of the most popular. But is there a load of third-party formats that only work with Pacific SaaS platforms? Is that what you’re trying to point out?
[00:04:40.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, it’s what I’m driving to, Jonathan. On this show, the Membership Machine, And at The Clean Show, we’ve had lots of conversations about Udeme, Kajabi, Podia, and those things, and they have their course builders built in. Then you look at LearnDash, Lifter LMS, and the WordPress space, which have their own course Scores Builder. Now, the good news is if you look at tools like Honors WP and their transfer tool, if you’re in LearnDash, you can migrate your users, your grades, your scores, and all that stuff over to Lifter LMS now because of that whole JSON, the way that things are built.
[00:05:19.470] – Jonathan Denwood
So you can see that I think we’ve lost most of the audience already. I’m sorry.
[00:05:23.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, but think about how the curriculum is built. And you mentioned SCORM. Scorm, as old as it is, because it’s funny. Someone said to me just this week, they said, Well, it’s a SCORM 2004 file. That one doesn’t work, but the SCORM 2002 file does. And I said, Well, just use the 2002 file since it works. They had 21 years to try and get it right, and they just haven’t caught up yet. That SCORM stuff is old, but it’s still at the top of the food chain when it comes to corporate professional training, because it was It’s the standard.
[00:06:00.720] – Jonathan Denwood
Let’s get off SCORM because that is part of the conversation, but we got a lot to cover.
[00:06:06.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
Where are you going to buy your curriculum, or are you going to make your curriculum? Then if you make your own curriculum, you have a ton of choices to go. But If you’re going to buy curriculum and it’s going to be scorm, then you’ve limited your choices.
[00:06:20.250] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’re producing it yourself, it’s going to be written content, folks. It’s going to be video, it’s going to be quizzes, it’s going to be essays, uploading essays, marking, whiteboard video conferencing. These are the bundle of elements that you’re going to need in a modern school-based online platform. There are some fully SaaS solutions, quasar solutions that you have to adapt. Others that are really focused at this market. They vary in price. They tend to get very expensive very quickly. That’s why a lot of educational organizations that see themselves as quasar schools or schools or colleges, whatever they want to call themselves, tend to look at WordPress because they like it and they’ve got experience with it. We’re not going to start with the learning management system because you need a website, and you might have an existing one, or depending on how old that is, you might be looking at a total revamp, but you’re probably going to want to do some of this yourself, or you might get a company to help you, or a freelancer, or it could be a mixture. You’re getting some help, but you’re also doing a lot of it yourself, or your team is, your fellow teachers.
[00:08:07.640] – Jonathan Denwood
So on WordPress, really in the world of WordPress, there is now what is called website builders, page builders, really the days of buying a single theme for a particular website. It’s still there, but it tends to come with a particular page builder. A lot of people are going to get a bit annoyed with me by saying that, but I think I’m roughly on the right track. What would you say, Kurt?
[00:08:42.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
The page builder thing could go on and on and on. What comes with WordPress out of the box, the Gutenberg editor is plenty capable. I just had this conversation with a client yesterday because their staff was used to divvy. I was like, I can get you used to Gutenberg real fast.
[00:08:59.930] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’re one of these, you’ve got somebody internal that has some web design, development knowledge, plus you’ve got a group of other teachers, or you’re hiring somebody to help you, but also you’re going to be doing some of this yourself. In my opinion, the most stable, easiest performance, make your life easy solution at the present moment, which we also give you at WP Tonic is guidance WP. End of story, as far as I’m concerned. A professional can use it, and so can a DIY person use it very effectively. I’m not saying it’s perfect because none of these things are perfect, but that’s the one hand on heart that I think when I look at my clientele and what we’re doing at WP Tonic, That’s what I would recommend. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:10:04.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
I got to agree with you. I’m a split still between Cadence and ASTRA. They’ve got ASTRO Pro, there’s Cadence Pro, there’s Spectra for ASTRO, there’s Cadence Blocks, and Cadence Pro.
[00:10:19.570] – Jonathan Denwood
I just find it very confusing how they’ve gone with it because they’ve got… This is confusing as it is, really, but they’ve They got Aster and they’ve got Spectra. I just find the whole thing, the way they’ve approached it, to try and explain it to people is confusing for us, I’m concerned.
[00:10:41.730] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s a separate license for each tool to send you back and It’s worth to try and make sure that… It does get confusing. But in the web building experience, they’re very similar in how they work, and they both extend Gutenberg very well.
[00:10:58.500] – Jonathan Denwood
My main aim is to I’ll try and keep this as simple as possible, not add any more confusion to it. Cadence it is. Right. So Divi comes up, especially because it’s got enormous strengths. I can’t recommend it because it’s slow, and I compare it to other solutions. Great people. Got nothing against them, but I can’t recommend it. What would you say?
[00:11:27.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m in the same boat with you as far as loving the people. I think about the word camp experiences and meeting the people and seeing their content marketing is phenomenal. The product just doesn’t deliver for what I need it to deliver for. And the people that love it, love it. So we’re not changing minds. We’re not changing minds. But just yesterday, I took on another project where things aren’t working in the website, and then the customer says to me, Oh, well, sometimes it’s the accessibi. We have to uninstall the accessibi and reinstall the accessibi because it doesn’t play well with divvy. And I’m Why are we playing these games?
[00:12:02.720] – Jonathan Denwood
No, just use guidance, WP. I’m sorry. But there will be performance issues. Performance elements issues and speed issues in using Divi. I’m sorry, they’re just games. If you want to use it, folks, it won’t be terrible, but there are better solutions. I’ve just got I’ll be honest with you, folks, but I’m not-There’s a learning curve, but there’s a great community behind it.
[00:12:36.850] – Kurt von Ahnen
If you’re willing to make the commitment and become the expert in it, it might be the tool that you love. But I find a lot of people that love Divi, Jonathan, are the artist types, people that are into design and artists. It’s like, Oh, you like a Mac over a PC? You might really like Divi.
[00:12:54.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I think what Cadence has done lately is overcoming that. I think one of the strengths with Divvy, and it still is, but I think Cadence is catching up, and we provide a solution also at WP Tonic, is that Divvy really had an enormous library of themes, starter websites, and they’ve got a community of third-party people that built Divi starter websites that you can purchase, and they’re not in That’s enormously expensive. They’ve built a whole community around that in providing third-party starter websites, and that’s enormously powerful. I think Cadence are trying to do that, or they’re There’s other people building on Cadence like WP tonic. Last one that I have very mixed feelings about, but when it comes… I’ve not used it myself, but it’s gained a a lot of popularity. I got to say, I would prefer to you, if you were looking at Divi, I would look at this. I would still use Cadence myself, and that’s a website builder, a page builder called Breakdance. What’s your feelings around Breakdance?
[00:14:20.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m in the same boat as you as far as not having used it personally. I do see it picking up in popularity, but It’s still relatively small.
[00:14:33.240] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s so small. Obviously, I’m going by what the company says. I have no insight, but they reckon they got over half a million installs or something like that. That’s not outrageous because there’s plugins that I’ve never heard of. When they come on my radar, they got over half a million installs.
[00:14:54.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
I remember when we interviewed InstaWP and they had such a huge number of websites that have been put out. But I like the idea that, and some people are going to get angry because they really love the other brand, but it’s it supposedly has more features than Elementor, works faster than Elementor, but is cheaper than Elementor. And I will tell you, as someone that signed up for the 399 a year thing with Elementor, I would love for that to be cheaper, right? So if there’s a cheaper example and it’s It supposedly works better and has more features, it’s worth the look. It’s definitely worth the look, especially from a DIY getting started perspective.
[00:15:37.930] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you’ve brought up something because people are going to think, why isn’t Jonathan talking about Elementor? I keep pronouncing incorrect. Elementor?
[00:15:49.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
Elementor.
[00:15:51.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Elementor. The reason in this, it’s a great tool, folks. We offer it at WP Tonic. We now really push Cadence WP, but we have clients use Elementor because there was a time where if you were a quasar DIY, it was the only tool that you could really utilize unless you were using Divi. I just couldn’t push Divi. If people wanted to use it on WP tonics hosting package, no problem. We have some clients that still use it today and they love it. Got no problem. The problem is all the functionality you’re going to need to run a school is going to be demanding on hosting. Then if you add elementar, to it, that’s a bit of a beast because it really is resource hungry. We provide really great hosting at WP Tonic, but a lot of the people I’m probably going to be looking at the cheaper end of hosting, and it probably won’t work out too well. That’s one of the other key areas, folks. Obviously, you’re probably looking at keeping the cost down. Don’t nickel and dime on the hosting because you’re going to have a terrible experience, folks. It doesn’t have to be full enterprise depending on the amount of students you’ve got.
[00:17:29.990] – Jonathan Denwood
But don’t think a shared $10 a month hosted account is going to work out for you. It isn’t.
[00:17:38.210] – Kurt von Ahnen
That comes to one of those introductory notes we probably should have made. It does your plan besides buying curriculum, do you plan on having synchronous learning or asynchronous learning? Because if you’re going to have 50 people sign in at the same time to take a course at the same time and take a quiz at the same time, that’s going to be a higher resource drain on your server than asynchronous learning where people do it at their own women fancy.
[00:18:04.860] – Jonathan Denwood
That is a great point. They were fancy words, but it means people are logged in to your website and doing stuff, and people are just viewing. They ain’t logged in to the website. And that logging in and doing stuff, the fancy words that Kirk has utilized, makes an enormous difference in the hosting you’re going to require enormous, from $10 to hundreds of dollars. But even if they’re not logging in and doing stuff, folks, the $10 share hosting account ain’t going to pan out. Not with what we’re talking about here, but compared to the SaaS solutions and what they charge, the cost savings are still going to be enormous. Enormous, enormous, compared to the SaaS solutions, folks. But don’t fool yourself that really cheap hosting is going to work because it isn’t. On to the next thing, which is the learning management system. To me, there’s only two choices here. It’s either LearnDash or Lifter LMS. Learndash, because it started a couple of years before Lifter LMS, it got It was the only real player in town for about 2-3 years, and it established a lot of credibility and a lot of SEO, search engine optimization.
[00:19:42.770] – Jonathan Denwood
When you do searches, there’s a lot of legacy content out there, and it does the job, and it has a big following in the school learning, college space because of that. But in my opinion, There isn’t too much difference between the two. The only thing, and this is just my opinion, Lifter LMS is still adding interesting stuff to their platform, where, in my opinion, LearnDash, very stable, credible, but they are not really doing much with their platform. They’re not really doing too much. Then there’s tutor LMS, great platform. It’s got a great following outside the US. I haven’t used it too much myself. I know people that have and love it. Then the third thing is master study. I bring them up because if you do a search, best LMS for schools on WordPress, whatever search, they will come up. I’ve never used them, but I have a major problem with them because it’s a hybrid. What I mean by hybrid is that they provide a theme for free That works, but you have to really… For it to do what you’re really looking for, you have to buy a plugin. I just don’t like these hybrids, folks.
[00:21:27.280] – Jonathan Denwood
I just don’t like that solution. What’s your thoughts about this and what I’ve just outlined, Kurt?
[00:21:36.550] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I think it’s important that we have full disclosure on the show. I also work directly with Lifter LMS because I joined them almost 10 years ago. I was an early adopter on their platform as a client, and I was so blown away by their support, and that free core plugin offered a ton for free. And then there were the add-ons, and I bought in I was an Infinity member very early. And to your point, to this day, they’re still releasing new features, new benefits. Some people might make a comment about code here or there, Jonathan. Other people say there’s notes in the code and it’s super easy to find and customize and integrate with. So I’m a big fan of Lifter. Learndash is another phenomenal learning platform, though. The course builder is very similar. We were talking earlier about curriculum. So if you’re building curriculum, LearnDash and Lifter have very similar course builders, and that layout is very consistent. The strategy about managing your students or your groups of students is different depending upon which platform you choose, but they’re both very, very, very capable. In my experience, the Tudor LMS is also a great platform.
[00:22:54.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s just it seems to be a great number three, but where I see it be a number two, maybe, is outside of the United States. I see a lot of people outside of the United States that go to Tudor LMS, primarily, and I’m not sure if that’s because of payment gateways or things that they have to consider in their regions, but I see it outside of the United States be referred to more frequently than inside the states.
[00:23:20.240] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s your opinion of Master Study?
[00:23:23.210] – Kurt von Ahnen
I was hoping I wouldn’t have to disclose my opinion. I’m not a fan.
[00:23:28.610] – Jonathan Denwood
You can’t get away from that. I’m sorry.
[00:23:32.130] – Kurt von Ahnen
I am not a fan of leveraging themes for functions. And I can remember now, maybe it was 12 or 13 years ago, let’s see, I wanted to have a website that made appointments. I would have been attracted to some invado theme somewhere that said, buy this theme and it makes appointments for you, or we’ll run a calendar for you, or we’ll make courses for you. I would have been attracted by that 10, 12 years ago. Now I think I’ve matured in the WordPress space, and I’ve come to my own conclusion that my theme is for global fonts, colors, things like that, appearance issues, and function for my website is going to be leveraged by a plugin. And then I have the power or the presence of mind to make changes in either of those categories as I see fit. But if you pick a theme for function, you get locked in and you really don’t know. You lose that sense of confidence or stability when you do that, I think.
[00:24:38.090] – Jonathan Denwood
To be honest, folks, though, if you choose one of these page builders and then you decide If you’re not going to utilize a starter theme that was built for one of these particular page builders, and you try then to move to a different page builder, you’re going to be able to do it. But It ain’t going to be clicking two buttons. There’s going to be a fair bit. If you’ve established a large website and a lot of content, a lot of training content, it’s not something to be taken lightly, and you’re probably not going to be able to do it yourself. So we got to be realistic here. But in general, I totally agree with Kirk. I don’t like the idea in general, and it’s caused me a lot. When I was at developer. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve lost a lot of my hair, not as much as Kirk, but it’s one of the things that have lost my hair, folks, is dealing with the nightmare where functionality is with layout and design.
[00:25:49.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
There’s something that we haven’t really addressed, and it’s the elephant in the room. We all assume it, but we very rarely discuss it. If I were to show you where I’ve tracked all the time for the different projects that I’ve worked on. That project I have Power Sport Academy, that’s 800 hours of my life in that project between curriculum development and all the things that go with making a learning project. That’s a tremendous amount of time as an investment. And so if that were locked into some theme outside of normal channels, it would be really hard to migrate that to something else if I wanted to change platforms. That’s something to really strongly consider.
[00:26:32.990] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. I didn’t do my intro for our sponsor, but I’m going to put it into our middle break. I got carried away on the subject. We’re going for our middle break, folks. Got a message from our major sponsor. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out we got a great course for you done by Kirk himself that shows you how to build a membership website from beginning to end with all the most modern WordPress tools, the easy peasy way of doing it. You can get this course at a great discount, 50% off, and a load of other great offers and resources aimed at you trying to build your membership website or community website on WordPress. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals, and you find the course plus all the other extras there. On we go, on we go on our journey. So I got marketing optimization here, but I think what’s more important is jump to what I think are two areas, and then Maybe we talk about marketing optimization. I can put another effort in when we get to that.
[00:28:06.650] – Jonathan Denwood
But I think there’s really two areas that are really important. They would be important in membership anyway. Well, I think there’s three areas. I think if you’re going to have a lot of video hosting, videos as training that students watch, I think WordPress with bunny. Net really offers a really fantastic cost-effective way, because I think a modern school online environment is going to have a lot of video. And if you utilize some of the SaaS, you can’t host these, well, you could, but it’s going to destroy you, the charges. You don’t want the physical files to be in the hosting area. You can say that with SCORM. We do provide solutions at WP Tonic. If you’re going to have a lot of Scorm files, but we have to talk to you about that. But when it comes to video, if you’ve got WordPress and you’re going to have a lot of videos, don’t upload them to your hosting area. You’re going to need a third party. Vimeo is a SaaS solution. Great. But I think they do offer some solutions for education, but I don’t know what deal they do or for nonprofits, but it’s still going to get expensive.
[00:29:40.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Wordpress, with bunny. Net, really offset a thing. It’s going to be a third to one-fifth the cost of these SaaS solutions. That’s normal commercial pricing. I don’t know what deal they do for education, though. Then you’re probably going to want webinars, group meetings. A lot of people are going to use Zoom. All the solutions, the learning management, app solutions, you can set up Zoom, and Zoom do offer sizable discounts for education. Getting it set up isn’t the most easiest thing to What we do now. If you host with WP tonic, we set it up for you, but trying to do it yourself isn’t the most easiest thing, right? But it worked. The main problem with Zoom, they do, like I say, is security. They’ve had a notorious history of being hacked and keeping it quiet, which is fine if you’re just dealing with normal business discussions. But when it When it comes to medical and when it comes to education, it makes me a bit queezy. The second thing is, with their discount educational plans, storing the recordings, they’re not very generous in their cloud storage. Obviously, you can download it and store it somewhere else.
[00:31:27.240] – Jonathan Denwood
The good news is there’s some really great solutions out there, Jitsy and Big Blue Button, of the two leading ones. At WP Tonic, Jitsy offers a SaaS-hosted solution, or you can self-host, and self-host Host is, We set it up for you at WP Tonic. The great thing with Jitsy is the self-hosted through WP Tonic, they offer a app that works on iOS and on Android. I don’t know if Big Blue do the same. I don’t think that they do, but I might be wrong there. The last time I checked it up, they didn’t, but things change, folks. I’ve just said a lot of stuff there. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:32:16.270] – Kurt von Ahnen
On the Big Blue button, when I used it with a client, it was browser-based. So unless they’ve made a recent change, it was browser-based. The Jitsy, I just want to articulate to people that might be listening or viewing this. It sounds confusing when Jonathan mentioned self-hosted or hosted examples. When I first got introduced to Jitsy, I got wrapped around the axel on it, too. I was like-They’re like WordPress.
[00:32:49.550] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m sorry to interrupt. Their documentation, the way it’s awful. The product’s good, but the way they present it, you couldn’t It is so confusing. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?
[00:33:05.510] – Kurt von Ahnen
It was, and it really took… I remember when you and I did the sample testing, to look at the video quality and stuff. The video quality, I thought, came through really well. It was a great platform once we got it figured out. But when we first started looking into it, I was like, This is too confusing. That’s the bonus of working with someone like a WP tonic, right? Because they go, oh, we’ve already done this. We can set this up for you. It’s a great product. And the set up on Zoom got super complicated last year when they changed the way that they did apps and stuff. But on that Zoom integration tool from a deal, I can’t remember his last name. He has an installation guide with that that is very clear, very precise. And if you follow the directions, it works flawlessly.
[00:33:59.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but It’s about 20 steps you got to do.
[00:34:03.470] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, it’s more than 20.
[00:34:04.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s- Gert studied it a few times for WP tonic and for his own agency, and we got a few other people, and the instructions that has deal has provided. He’s the leading expert in Zoom integration with WordPress. He’s made a bit of a reputation for himself in in that area. He was gobsmacked when they went down this route. But he’s done an excellent job, but he’s 20 plus more steps, isn’t it?
[00:34:44.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s a lot. Keep in mind, I know what I’m doing, and it still takes me an hour to 90 minutes to set an account up on it in the site. But once it’s set up and you can set up your Zoom meetings directly in your site, and it adopts the branding from your brand instead of the Zoom brand when you share the links, there’s so many benefits to it, but it’s an ask to get it done.
[00:35:06.140] – Jonathan Denwood
Where it comes to Jitsy, Jitsy is very like WordPress, folks. Wordpress has wordpress. Com, and it has wordpress. Org, and with wordpress. Com, they do provide a free… I think they do, or maybe not. I think it’s all paid there. They used to offer a free account, but it was very limited. I think it’s all paid with wordpress. Com. Now, Jitsy is the same. They offer their own hosted solution, and they do offer a free account, and it works, and it’s really easy to use. But if you have more than one person, it’s very limited. As soon as you want group and that, you have to start paying. And the jump from the free version to the paid version is from free to $99 a month or something. It’s a really big jump. But they offer a downloadable version of the software, but you have to host it, and we host it for you at WP tonic. We have to find how many students you’re going to use because we normally don’t do that on the lower plan, but we discuss it with you, and we will maintain it for you, and you have that functionality, and a lot of people are attracted to it.
[00:36:38.320] – Jonathan Denwood
But when you go to the Jitsy website, it is godforsakenly confusing. I mean, it makes the documentation in wordpress. Com insightful, doesn’t it?
[00:36:55.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
I was going to say it’s almost worse than Woocommerce.
[00:36:59.820] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s saying something, isn’t it?
[00:37:01.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
That is saying something.
[00:37:04.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Because I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years now, folks. I’m a bit embarrassed. I got into web development as a second career in my late ’30s. I had to do a big dive with Jitsy because it’s so freaking confusing. But it works great, folks. You just need somebody If you’re going to host it, self-host, you really need somebody like WP Tonic. If you’re just going to use their SaaS solution, it’s not complicated, but it’s such an enormous jump from the free to the paid version. Whiteboards. There’s a lot of SaaS solutions, and there’s a lot of solutions that work with WordPress. The only one that I is micro, but there’s a number of SaaS-based, and normally they provide WordPress plugins. A lot of them don’t work that well when it comes from third-party SaaS providers, but there’s probably a load of free or not that expensive WordPress third-party plugins that offer more functionality to the SaaS space. I think Zoom offers a whiteboard as well, don’t they?
[00:38:30.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Zoom has a whiteboard, and I’m going to go out on a limb and mention a new name we haven’t mentioned yet, but Whereby has a whiteboard as well, I believe.
[00:38:39.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, yes, you love them. They’re great. I didn’t mention them because But would you use that with schools as well?
[00:38:48.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I would. I like that platform, but that’s another one of those confusing ones. It’s an open-source program, and they have a full section.
[00:38:58.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Is it open-source?
[00:39:00.230] – Kurt von Ahnen
I believe it’s open source because I have a full section for developers in there.
[00:39:05.150] – Jonathan Denwood
I might be totally wrong, but you need to check that because I don’t think it is actually. I don’t think it’s open source.
[00:39:13.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, then let’s stick a pin in that one and forget that I said it. Maybe you can edit it out.
[00:39:16.550] – Jonathan Denwood
I might be wrong. I’m not saying I’m right. I’m wrong all the time, so I like her a bit, but you might be right. I just think you need to check that. I think because they provide a lot of documentation for third-party developers. It doesn’t mean it’s open source.
[00:39:33.330] – Kurt von Ahnen
Tons, yeah. They got the developer guide and the whole thing.
[00:39:35.540] – Jonathan Denwood
They do provide fantastic documentation, totally the opposite of Jitsi. That is an open source project, but their documentation is awful. But they’ve been around for years, Jitsi, and it works really well. So take your poison. But I call them the Norwegians because it’s Norwegian company, but they do provide fantastic. It’s totally the opposite of Zoom, folks, because it’s browser-based, so it’s dead easy to embed it on a WordPress. They provide a snippet of code, and it’s all web-based. It’s slightly the opposite of… My only thing is, when it comes to… There’s a big jump from their free version if you got larger groups, but I think it’s up to 200 people. It’s only bigger That probably worked well for the average school because you’re not going to have a class of more than a couple of students, are you? No.
[00:40:45.470] – Kurt von Ahnen
Classes have to be manageable in order for a facilitator to be able to actually teach. I rarely see a class go over 50, rarely. And just for clarification, I looked it up in the browser.
[00:40:55.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Teachers earn their money, don’t they?
[00:40:59.210] – Kurt von Ahnen
Whereby is not open to it.
[00:41:01.250] – Jonathan Denwood
I can be a teacher. I can do it.
[00:41:04.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
I like teaching.
[00:41:05.880] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, adults, but I couldn’t teach children. Sorry. I love children, but I couldn’t teach them. I’d rather get a gun and shoot your saints. If you’re a teacher and you’re listening to this, you’re a saint, you earn your money. I was a horrible student. A snotty little shit I was. Surprise, surprise. But Whiteboarding is quite important.
[00:41:34.870] – Kurt von Ahnen
Something that we never talked about with this whole whiteboard thing, and I abandoned whiteboards a long time ago. Maybe it’s because I’m left-handed, maybe it’s because I like to really draw.
[00:41:43.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I’m left-handed as well.
[00:41:45.290] – Kurt von Ahnen
But you can do amazing things now with the screen share option for tablets, for iPads, iPad pros, Android tablets. I use the remarkable tablet, and I can actually write and draw on it for people in my meetings.
[00:42:01.370] – Jonathan Denwood
You love your tablet, don’t you?
[00:42:02.650] – Kurt von Ahnen
I do love my tablet.
[00:42:04.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Did you know that 90% of dyslexists are left-handed?
[00:42:10.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
But I don’t think I have dyslexia, so I think I’m okay there.
[00:42:13.790] – Jonathan Denwood
But yeah, Thanks a lot. He hasn’t got the weave, see, folks. He doesn’t weave.
[00:42:22.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
I might have a little titch of the ADHD because now I’m talking about- You’ve been working with me for a couple of years, so that’s what’s happening.
[00:42:31.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Sorry.
[00:42:32.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, it’s all good. I notice a lot of professionals use the tablet option, and even if they use a tool that has the whiteboard, sometimes it’s easier just to have that thing that you can draw on right on your desk.
[00:42:46.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s a good point. Because a lot of these whiteboarding, what’s one or two of the biggest… Is it blackboard?
[00:42:56.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
Blackboard, yeah. Blackboard and something like that. What’s Customized Moodle platforms will use an added feature for what you’re talking about.
[00:43:04.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Google’s big in the education.
[00:43:06.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
Moodle’s huge, yeah. Moodle’s huge.
[00:43:09.920] – Jonathan Denwood
And Google, Google themselves, they offer a lot of products.
[00:43:13.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
Google has a Google Classroom feature, yeah.
[00:43:18.630] – Jonathan Denwood
I found them to be awful, especially Blackboard, which costs us a fortune. Moodle is fine, but it’s just It’s like going back into the ’90s. I know recently, it’s like moving from WordPress to Drupal. Sorry, Drupal, it’s like going back to Drupal. It’s like going back into the past. When it comes to Google, just folks, my experience, if you got any technical problems or anything dealing with Google, what a pain in the ass dealing with them about anything.
[00:44:04.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
I have my mobile phone through them, and I cannot wait to move plans. It’s been years. We’ve been with them for years on the Google FI, but I needed help with something, and it was a nightmare.
[00:44:14.310] – Jonathan Denwood
You just don’t You just don’t get any help from them, do you? No. It’s just to speak to somebody is practically impossible, isn’t it?
[00:44:24.900] – Kurt von Ahnen
Correct. Yeah, it’s the service side of it’s a nightmare. If If you create a school and you’re responsible for educating people’s children or any student example, you don’t have three, four, or five days to solve or get to the crux of something. You’ve got to get assistance right away. So knowing that you have a platform that has an active community or a way to get help right away is important.
[00:44:51.620] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to talk about email marketing, email in general, when it comes to schools. It’s going to be a last subject. I forgot to do my starter advert for a sponsor. It’s going to do it now. So we’re going to go for another break, and then we’re going to talk about email, which is another big subject when it comes to schools and that. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I think we’ve covered a ton of stuff.
[00:45:26.930] – Kurt von Ahnen
We’ve covered a ton. This has been a.
[00:45:29.420] – Jonathan Denwood
We We’ve given a lot of good stuff here. That’s my thoughts. Please tell us what you think, how we’ve done. Comment on the YouTube video if you’re watching this, and give us some feedback, how we’re doing. I know Kirk’s done a good job. I don’t expect anybody to say, I’ve done a good job. But before we go into email marketing, I want to point out that we’ve got a great free resource for you trying to build online school, a membership, a community on WordPress, or even one of the other alternatives. And that’s the Membership Machine Facebook Group. It’s totally free. It’s a great community of WordPress and people like you trying to build a business or some form of online community. Please go to Facebook and join us there. It’s totally free and we love you to be part of the discussion. Let’s go on to email, which is enough. School email. Google does some special… This is the thing, Google’s in two places. You got Gmail, folks, which is their totally free version, but nothing is free when it comes to online. The reason they provide Gmail is they monitor everything that goes through Gmail.
[00:46:58.360] – Jonathan Denwood
If you want your students’ private discussions between their students and their teachers, they’re using AI now to totally crawl through everything that Gmail is using. To death. None of your discussions with your students about any personal subject, if you’re using Gmail, is going to be private in any shape or form. I don’t care what Google tells you. Take it with a pinch of salt. I can’t go any further because I don’t want to get into trouble. They’re professional version. Workspaces, they’re always changing. That domain domain-specific. So schoolsinlevada. Com, karen@schoolsinnlevada. Com, or. Org. You can have a host. It works. It gets really expensive really quick. They do offer really big discounts for education, big discount. The problem is, it’s the same problem as with Gmail. They reckon they ain’t doing it so much, but I think they’re looking at every conversation going. I want to point out, I applied this to Microsoft, Microsoft and Outlook, and their email service, they’re looking at every conversation with their AI technology, and that is the problem. But there are some solutions There’s a lot of solutions out there, but that’s a problem when it comes to inbox functionality.
[00:48:52.990] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’re okay with that, folks, it’s fine. Outlook, my Microsoft 365, is it?
[00:49:03.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
Microsoft 365.
[00:49:05.300] – Jonathan Denwood
They offer also big discounts for educational organizations. There are alternatives out there. Zolo offers something. There’s a number. I use a service. There are some really quality services out there, but you do need somebody like WP Tonic to really set it up for you because it’s a little bit more technical. But your proof is you and your students, and they’re very cost-effective. If you’re interested to find out more, you can book a session with me on the WP Tonic website for free, and I’ll give you more information about that. But that’s Inbox. But then you got the whole email marketing sending out certificates, the day-to-day running of a online school, haven’t you, Kirk? First of all, what’s your response to me, what I’ve said about Google and Microsoft?
[00:50:15.450] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree on so much of that. The big companies… Email is such a confusing topic because a lot of us grew up with like, Oh, I have an AOL, or I have a Yahoo, or I have a Gmail.
[00:50:29.520] – Jonathan Denwood
You still have a Yahoo, but that’s doing the savers’ Google.
[00:50:33.470] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, but what that did was it gave people the impression that email was just this given simple, easy thing. It’s just email. How hard could it be to run email? Then you get into web hosting and URL management and custom URLs, and then you go, Well, how do I get my emails? Then you find out the real truth, and that is you got to set this crud up. You’ve got to have an email client that you trust that you can use. You’ve got to have an email server. You’ve got to have a way to route it through the DNS. You have to set it up. I’m not trying to make it sound overly confusing. I’m just saying it for what it is. Managing email effectively is a task.
[00:51:12.300] – Jonathan Denwood
Most quality hosting providers won’t provide any inbox. At WP Tonic, if you want to, we offer one inbox. You can have a number of nicknames, but we do offer one inbox because we do it just to make it as a to see to our clients, but we don’t want to get involved in the inbox email. So if you want more, we help you set up. We got a partner that I use myself that specializes in providing inbox. We and it’s secure, and your email will not be scanned by Google or Microsoft. I’m more than happy to talk about it and give you information. It’s too technical for this conversation. Sorry to interrupt, but we do provide one inbox throughout, but the reason why we limited it is I just don’t want to get involved in it, because if you got more than one inbox, it can be tricky, can’t it, Kurt?
[00:52:19.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, you want to provide the best support possible where your strengths are. As a hosting company, that’s focusing on the site and the plugins. If you don’t want to get wrapped up in, how come Jimmy’s not getting… How come this is going to Jimmy’s spam box? I don’t care about Jimmy’s spam box because we’re running websites. It really is two different animals.
[00:52:40.330] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but then you got the marketing and the transactional. The transactional is somebody finishes a class course. They’re sent a certificate, or you’re using gamification, or you’re sending out a series of email when they finish something, an assignment. They’ve uploaded an essay, and it triggers… And by uploading the essay, they officially finish a course, an assignment. That triggers Tommy, you’ve finished the course, you need to go here, blah, blah, blah. That’s all called transactional email. And then you have marketing email, sending email to students or to parents or people outside the organization that are supporting. Fundraising is an important area for a lot of nonprofit quasar educational institutions. They really rely on sponsorship and people supporting them. So email marketing is quite important to those type of organizations. You need a third-party platform to send out these type of email. Your hosting provider can provide it, but it’s going to be extremely limiting, and a lot that email is going to end up in people’s junk folder. And especially if they’re using Gmail, they’ve got what is called marketing folders, and a lot of people never check them. So you’re going to need a provider At WP Tonic, we partner with a provider called Sendgrid, and we provide the marketing and transactional functionality as part of our hosting package.
[00:54:45.660] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re one of the few hosting providers that do that. We do it because we specialize in learning management systems, membership, and community-focused websites. If you You can’t send out the transactional email, that’s a slight problem, isn’t it? How would you respond, Kurt?
[00:55:10.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, so many things, you have to babysit it. For instance, I was on a well-known email server, a different brand than Sendgrid, and over time, I noticed that my sending authority had been denigrated. It had gone down. I was sending emails, and people say, Oh, I didn’t get it. It was in my spam box. I found it later, whatever. I was like, Well, now I got to switch. In my 15 years in business as Manjana Nomas, I have probably had four or five different email servers. I will say I’m on Sendgrid now, and I’m sending it flawlessly. It’s working well.
[00:55:52.890] – Jonathan Denwood
It just works. There is a provider; there are about three to four. I don’t know them. Send Blue and Bravo. They’re called now hybrid because they provide their email, newsletter, marketing, and automation platform. They also offer what I call email-sending engine service. I just think Sendgrid is better than them. A lot of people would disagree with me. Fair adieu. It’s just my opinion. I’m not saying I’m right, wrong, or Indifferent. There are a couple of others that are popular. Sendgrid is less popular because they do offer a free service, but they cut it down to a level where you can only use it for testing purposes, you can’t use it. That’s why it became less popular in WordPress. But if you paid the paid version, it’s a pretty reliable, rock-solid email sending. And that’s what you’re looking for in email when it comes to a transactional and marketing email, isn’t it?
[00:57:09.910] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, and I want to go one step further in our discussion here because if we’re talking to people new to WordPress or running a website, especially one for business, they will say, Oh, my server can send the emails. I can send emails. I always send emails, and I don’t have a problem. As your business grows, your list grows, and the bandwidth requirements start stressing your server, the people you are hosting with will be. You can’t do this, right? And you’re going to get some restrictions and stuff.
[00:57:39.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Very quickly, about 100 emails a day at best, and really If they see you using it for transactional and marketing functionality, you’re going to get a tap on the shoulder pretty rapidly.
[00:57:55.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. You must know it is not set up if you’re on some $ 10-a-month plan with email, inbox hosting, and all this stuff. You don’t have the bandwidth or the server resources to do what you think you want to do. Knowing that upfront is essential because you’ll see something and go, Oh, it works. It’s not working. Many emails won’t get into the inbox because their email servers are marked up for junk anyway.
[00:58:27.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Secondly, they don’t want you using it for that because it was not designed. It’s intended for some base. And I wouldn’t even use your hosting provider, even if they say they provide inbox, because I found it pretty flaky with that cheaper level. And the better WordPress hosting, don’t give any email because they don’t want to get involved.
[00:58:54.590] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Correct.
[00:58:58.000] – Jonathan Denwood
They just don’t want to touch it, folks. I think that’s it. I think we’ve covered a ton of that. What’s the best way for people to learn more about you and what you’re up to, Kurt?
[00:59:10.650] – Kurt von Ahnen
Anything online that’s Manana Nomas is typically branded by us. Manana Nomas for business. If you just want to reach out or make a connection, or you’re looking for someone to be a guest on your podcast, connect with me through LinkedIn. I check LinkedIn almost daily, and I’m the only Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn.
[00:59:29.120] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, Kurt, There are two areas that Kirk is the king of: Scorm and LinkedIn. He’s the LinkedIn king. He’s written a course about LinkedIn, and he’s written a course on Scorm and WordPress. So he’s the Scorm LinkedIn man. So, thanks so much for being a co-host on this show. I’ve enjoyed it. We will return next week with some subjects to help you build a great membership. eLearning will be back soon, folks. Bye.
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