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best WordPress themes for online education

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips

Best education WordPress themes & Checklist for building a school site

October 7, 2015

You think about building a self-host WordPress site for your training center and want to create a checklist for it. You find out that there are a lot of things to do but do not know where you should start. You may wonder: “What should I consider?” or “How to choose a theme among the best education WordPress themes?”

In this article, we will show you the most important things you need to think about when you are planning to build a WordPress education website or renew an old one. Also, we will suggest some best responsive education WordPress themes which are used by many schools.

1. Form and Content

A website is a communication gate, like a school guide, e-mail, a letter, a poster, etc., which identify the school. Therefore, it is important to adjust both the content and form, in the culture and identity of your school.

When you develop an identity for the school, always ask for work files or vector files of your logo and other branding files. If you build a website, these files are needed.

Remember to think about what content should be on your website:

  • General information such as contact information, mission, vision and educational concepts
  • Impressive school photos, videos and text, current data such as calendar and news
  • Documents such as school guide and newsletters

And what’s more?

  • Is there a communications handbook which could be used as an auxiliary guide?

Also, when you understand what content should be on the site, you can start to make a list of best education WordPress themes whose design may highlight the content.

2. Purpose and Function of the school website

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Before you define the functionality of the school site, it is important to ask yourself the question: What do we want to achieve with your website?

A school site has more than one function:

  • Recruit students
  • Communicate with parents, students, colleagues and other schools through the interactive features of this website
  • Access to available material to facilitate homework

And much more…

Determining purpose and function of the site is very important since it decides which features your theme need to have. This helps you complete your list of best education WordPress themes.

3. Security and Privacy

Be cautious and careful when posting photos on the website. Not all parents are happy when they find pictures of their children online. Many schools ask for agreement in their registration form.

You can choose to make a selection of photos that are publicly supporting the presentation of the school. The other photographs may be shielded so that only parents and teachers can see them by using a password.

Are there other areas of the website that you want to make available to colleagues or parents of students?

4. Target audience

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Who is this site for?

Of course, parents of potential new students will first contact with your school via the site, so be sure that the website gives a good picture of the school and invites them to come.

Consider also the current parents; they can simply stay up to date on the developments of the school. This facilitates the involvement of students. So remember to involve them in the content and ensure that they can be proud of their school website. Your students are the most important ambassadors of your school.

5. Cost

What budget do you have for a website? Now and in a year?

WordPress itself is free; and it comes with a lot of free themes and plugins. However, when building professional school sites you will need to use the best education WordPress themes among premium WordPress themes. This is worth investing in since a website is more than just a recruitment tool, maybe you can cut costs on other communication channels (such as newsletters, school guides, letters) by making them digitally via the website or email.

A website is not a one-time investment, keep in mind that the website should be maintained. It is better if you can hire a developer to manage and keep your website safe and updated.

In short, plan a budget for the following things:

  • Website building: Domain, hosting, premium WordPress themes and plugins, etc.
  • Website management
  • Site maintenance

6. Management/Editorial

Make sure that you manage the website through a so-called system. View this critically before you build the website. It is important that the website is easy to manage itself. This avoids additional external support costs and prevents the contents from being tracked.

  • Who is primarily responsible for keeping the website?
  • Who will take care of the content of the website? An editorial team, and every teacher, perhaps students can also make a contribution?

Make the website part of the permanent communication. For example, always place the newsletter on the website.

7. Technical maintenance

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Most of premium plugins and the best education WordPress themes offer professional technical support. However, you should take a deep look at them to ensure that technical maintenance remains affordable and is carried out by trusted partners.

Avoid being too dependent on the developer you hire. WordPress is an open source, so you can always enable another partner to take over the maintenance of the website, or make technical adjustments.

8. Other interesting questions

  • Do you need a site with social networks such as Twitter, or Facebook? It is a fact that everybody increasingly uses them, be aware of that. See if you can make use of them.
  • Remember that websites are increasingly being viewed on mobile devices. So, how can you take this into account and make use of it?
  • If you are building a site network, do you want to buy some best WordPress themes for online education or just purchase one item?

best education wordpress themes

List of some best education WordPress themes

  • University – Education, Event and Course Theme
  • Academy – Learning Management Theme
  • Clever Course – One of the best education WordPress themes for online courses
  • LMS | Responsive Learning Management System
  • Kids Zone | Responsive Children Theme

Above are some of the best responsive education WordPress themes for your preference. You can purchase it on ThemeForest with only $59 for each item.

Hope you will have a perfect school site!

Featured, WordPress Plugins

LearnDash – A Plugin Compatible with Best Education WordPress Themes

September 22, 2015

WordPress users who own educational sites are all familiar with LearnDash, a plugin that best education WordPress themes usually support. Now, with LearnDash, you can create learning management system for your own as it provide perfect and complete solution for online courses. At the end of this article, we also mention about another powerful plugin for your preference.

LEARNDASH – LMS plugin compatible with best education WordPress themes

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This plugin lets you use any medium to create and deliver your courses. The platform is sale integrated. It includes forums that can be private or public, and also specific course. You can set preconditions and multilevel classes. It has lesson timers, advanced quizzes, group management, multisite, and tons more. It is sensitive and works with any theme in general and any best WordPress themes for online education in particular

It is a demonstration site where you can see what lessons might look like. The structure of the lesson is smooth and easy to navigate. You can see the contents of the course, take the game, and see your achievements. You can define simple or complex hierarchical structure for the courses, and it will label them as complete before allowing students to continue in the course.

This is a premium plugin. The basic package is $99 and includes an unlimited license with 1-year support. The complete package is $129 and adds the pro panel.

GOOD LMS – Learning Management System WordPress Plugin

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This is a learning management system and complete course delivery. It has a great appearance and many helpful options to create courses and quiz. The plugin also allows site owners to put a rating system in each course so students can evaluate this one.

The courses show a progress bar so that students know their current position in the course. The course itself may be a mixture of text and video. As the students go through the pages, progress will change to follow.

At the end of the course, the students can take a timed quiz, which can be a combination of multiple choice and written. There is a system of certificates and badges so you can choose the type of recipient students receive at the end of the course. You can see this feature in the plugin demo.

There are several different payment methods, including PayPal, Stripe, Paymill, Authorized.net, bank transfer, etc. You can even have on-site courses and just use the system as a secure means of payment and monitoring. The plugin also have commission rate for instructors.

The plugin costs $30 for use on a single site.

In short, whatever type of school site you choose to build, whether it is an information site or a full online school, WordPress has the best education WordPress themes and tools to make them work and look great. You can add courses to your site, create comprehensive school structure navigation, or create a site with information about the school.

Your turn! Have you created a school website with WordPress? Have you used the plugins compatible with best education WordPress themes that this article mentions here? Or have we missed your favorite? We would like to hear about it in the comments below!