Category Archives: Wordpress

How to Build an E-Learning Website – 5-Point evaluation

In this blogpost I discuss how you can build an E-learning website. I make the recommendations on the basis of the following five parameters:

Technical Skills required to create the website
Features and Customization available
Cost of solution for building website
Time to build solution
Expected Number of students and scaling with increasing numbers

The four methods that you can use to create your E-learning website are:

Coding using PHP/ ASP/Jave/ Node.JS
Content Management Systems – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Moodle
Website Builders – Weebly, Wix, SquareSpace
E-Learning Website builders – Teachable, WebAnywhere

Here is a video explaining in full detail all the options. A text version of video is also included below.

Coding Using PHP/ ASP/ Node.JS

Technical Skills required

A website may be built from scratch using PHP, ASP and Node.Js. Naturally building these websites would either require an in-house website developer or should be outsourced to web designer. Which of the coding platforms – PHP, ASP or Node.JS you opt for would depend largely on the preferences and comfort levels of the developer in your team/ the web designer that you hire. PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages, while Node.JS is the newest website runtime environment which has seen massive adoption for websites. Alongside choosing the language, you would need to setup the server and database as well. For building a large website you can use a custom solution with a dedicated server on Amazon Web Services. For single-website usages (the more likely scenario) for E-learning websites, you can opt for shared web server hosting, using for example GoDaddy.

Features and Customization

Since your website is being built from the ground up, you have the widest possible options for customization for features that you wish to incorporate. For instance, as a security mechanism against sharing of login credentials, you may set an upper limit on overall time a student may be logged in to the system. Such a solution can be implemented while building the website code.

One thing that you should make clear is to ensure that the code is well documented. Good documentation ensures continuity between different developer teams.

Cost of Solution

Such a solution would require a dedicated development team to build. Support and maintenance are also additional issues that you would need to work on.

Time to Build Solution

Keep a time period of 2-3 months for such a website to build. To minimize site development time you should have developed a good understanding of the design and structure of your website, and communicated that to the developer. This would ensure minimal confusion in the website development process

Scale of website and Expected Number

1,000+ expected annual users – You would be able to incorporate features specifically on the basis of user requirements. It is important to make sure that appropriate security features are installed in the website framework.

Content Management Systems – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Moodle

Technical Skills required

Such an option mainly requires familiarity with the CMS interface. These skills can be learnt quite easily by beginners. A number of our clients – independent artists and individual teachers – have easily setup their WordPress and Moodle websites for hosting their E-learning courses. There would be a one-time effort in setting up the server though.

Features and Customization

Moodle is an LMS, and is therefore designed as an E-learning platform. WordPress on the other hand is a Content Management System, to which you can add LMS functionality through WordPress plugins.

Cost of Solution

Costs of building websites on Content Management Systems include cost of plugins for adding functionalities. WordPress and Joomla offer plugins such as Sensei, Guru and eMember, which simplify the process of course-creation considerably. Many of the useful plugins available are paid, while a lot of them are free as well (generally free plugins offer specific solutions, while paid plugins bundle a whole lot of useful features together). Cost-wise this is the cheapest solution, as the CMS itself is free – the only costs are the plugins and the server hosting.

Time to Build Solution

Expect a time to launch between 15 to 30 days for a fully functional CMS hosted site.

Scale of website and Expected Number

Such a solution would work pretty good upto a number of 10,000 students. There is no lower limit to the number of students, as costs are low.

Website Builders – Weebly, Wix, SquareSpace

Technical Skills required

In this solution the website hosting company uses a basic website template that they use.

Features and Customization

Such a website would follow a basic template, and there are not many options to customize additional features.

Cost of Solution

The cost of building such a website include purchasing the website template and server hosting.

Time to Build Solution

Fast – You need very little time to deploy such a video hosting solution. Server setup and configuration of the website would take time between 7-10 days.

Scale of website and Expected Number

Implementing such a website is best for the case of fast-deployment of your e-learning platform. Because time of launch and costs are priority in this, such a solution would be appropriate for upto 100 users paying for the course. Beyond this number this solution fails to add the customizations you need to cater to the growing list of users.

E-Learning Website builders – Teachable, WebAnywhere

Technical Skills required

There is no coding required. Most features can be implemented using drag-and-drop

Features and Customisation

Teachable and WebAnywhere offer ready-to-use E-Learning themes, Student management options, Media and text addition, Membership Access, Server hosting and Database management.

The features that these sites offer are sufficient for most e-learning website creators. These sites however are not very customizable in terms of additional security features or tweaks in User Interface. UI additions such as adding comment sections to pages, and security restrictions such as restricting login time on page, are not available when you opt for this solution.

Cost of Solution

Costs are dependent on the features you integrate, and the number of students enrolled. Because the websites are designed specifically for e-learning such a solution is somewhat more expensive than the case of ready-to-make websites.

Time to Build Solution

7-10 days

Scale of website and Expected Number

Such a website solution would be appropriate for upto 1000 annual users. This is the approximate number of students you can manage without the need to alter your User Interface and backend. Beyond this number you should explore CMS hosting or creating your own website.

Suggestions

When you set about creating an e-learning website I recommend that you check other websites in similar areas. You can use the tool BuiltWith to analyze the tech stack on which any website is made. If you find that 8 out of 10 of your competitors use a particular tech stack, then implementing that stack would be the most reliable way to build an e-learning site.

Streaming E-Learning Videos And Protection From Piracy

The reasons I am specifically writing a different section on video streaming for e-Learning is because:

Video courses are typically the lifeline of any e-Learning portal and second
Video streaming and safeguarding the video content from piracy is a major technical challenge, which the 4 options discussed do not solve inherently themselves. Most of E-Learning sites use some premium video streaming provider to cater to their streaming needs.

Streaming bufferless for HD worldwide and ensuring smooth delivery to regions in Africa and India with slow connections is a major problem. YouTube is quite good in this aspect, but lacks business friendly customization. Vimeo has a B2B offering that is quite popular and is okay in terms of streaming experience. YouTube and Vimeo use standard streaming protocols to deliver video content, and thus a lot of free plugins and downloaders are able to grab and download the videos. For this reason, a more custom video player, providing higher security and flexibility to manage video related features, is needed for premium videos. Here is the link to implement and compare secure technologies used in video hosting for education. Many of the top e-Learning companies either go for a combination of the above solutions or build proprietary systems of their own (for example Udemy and BYJU’s).

Aspect of Comparison	Code from Raw: PHP, ASP, NodeJS, JAVA	Moodle, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal + LMS themes + Plugins	Ready to launch E-learning site – Teachable, Thinkfic etc	Ready to Launch Generic Website – Weebly, Wix
Coding Skills Required	Every functionality is full coded, require full stack development team	One Time server setup required	Nil	Nil
Features & Customization	All customizations are possible, but takes time and cost	Most of Elearning functionalities available, Decent customizable. Have to give up on 10-20% of your custom needs	Common Elearning functionalities available, except some themes, major customizations not possible.	Elearning feature set integration not so varied – suitable for start simple cases
Cost	One time considerable cost, recommended for long term control and stability	Quite affordable, themes plugins have one time costs	Charges monthly basis, not much burden in form of upfront costs	Quite affordable , one time costs
Time	2-3 months to go live, each new feature takes time	1 month typically to go live, additional features doable through plugins , not much time taken	Go live in a day, not much feature addition can be done, so no time addition	Go live in a day, not much feature addition can be done, so no time addition
Scale Effects	Good for large user base companies	Good if number of students not going more then 10,000	Good till scale of 1000	Good for starting and testing up , upto 500 paid users
Conclusion	Choice of technology depends on comfort of your dev team, ideal for large custom required sites	Optimizes cost , features and control of all the options- Most popular option I have seen	Good for individual teachers. Have to give up on customizations. Affordable	Good for experimentation, Better to choose amongst other 3 for full elearning portal

I will be happy to have feedback and questions in the comments section below or on my LinkedIn profile. You can also share your experience with above technologies and any interesting insights.

A version of this blog was first published on E-learningIndustry.com

Top 10 WordPress Plugins For E-Learning

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Starting out with creating your WordPress online course, but confused about which plugins for E-Learning to choose from?

Not sure which functionalities are necessary and which functionalities are optional?

In this blogpost I walk you through the most important WordPress plugins for E-Learning course developers to choose from.

First I proceed with how you should evaluate your requirements in designing the course.

Learning Management System (LMS) plugins for E-Learning

The most significant features that an LMS must have is for you to be able to:

Give learner flexibility to pace their course as per their wish – self-paced course
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get Interface, to put minimum effort into using the interface
Making complete course catalog, so that all the course information is collected at one location
Automated User Enrolment and Status of course progress – completion status
Course Reports for course creator to review how a course is progressing
Learner feedback – Course Surveys and System Announcements – These are essential for the instructor to continually improve the learning experience
Learner’s access to course transcript and course progress – Learners should have knowledge about their course progress as well
Learner access to changing profile

Apart from these there are a number of other features that you may wish for, which would include

Creating multiple course levels – so that there may be content-lite and content-heavy memberships
Creating certificates of completion for learners that complete their course – certificates are a strong motivation for learners, as they provide tangible proof of the skills learnt
Automating user access control – Restricting access to content and granting access to content depending on user level
Generating course and user reports for course administrator
Creating dripped content for controlling user progress in course – To control rate at which learner accesses the course, create dripped content tool

WooCommerce Sensei

Sensei comes from the stable of WooCommerce, who are experts in developing eCommerce WordPress Plugins. Sensei is priced at $129 for a single-site license. This WordPress plugin for E-Learning is a simple and effective interface for making courses, as the course, module, lesson and quiz sections can all be created with a lot of ease. The interface is essentially What-You-See-is-What-You-Get. Because of its compatibility with all WooCommerce plugins, and because of an interface that gets most things done easily and quickly, Sensei is our top-rated Learning Management Solution plugin.

LearnDash

Learndash specializes in E-Learning solutions, meaning that they have developed their LMS WordPress plugin for E-Learning keeping in mind any features that an education LMS must require.

SCORM is a collection of standards for E-Learning, which state how the LMS must package user learning content. SCORM standards ensure portability of learner information across different LMS. Tin Can API has now replaced SCORM as the new standard for educational content designed in a portable way. Learndash supports Tin Can API plugin.

Learndash have tried to make a complete marketing and product solution- they have their own membership solution, and have an integrated payment processing setup. The flip side of being an all-in-one solution is that this do not allow much scope for customization. On the other hand they have an active community support forum.

Essentially Learndash is optimal for developing detailed and academic-level E-Learning solutions, where little customization is required.

WP CourseWare

WP Courseware plugin for eLearning

WP Courseware is a lightweight WordPress plugin for E-Learning, whose strong point is that it integrates fairly easily with other WP Plugins. Likewise with this WordPress plugin you get a large varieties of customization options. An important plugin that WP CourseWare can integrate with is Membership Pro, which is the most popular membership WordPress plugin.

LearnPress

LearnPress plugin for eLearning

LearnPress is offered as a free plugin, and includes both free features and premium add-ons.

Premium add-ons apply for:

Gamifying the course – adding points for learner activity
Generating certificate
For Integration with WooCommerce, PayPal and Stripe
Integrating with Membership 2 Pro

LifterLMS

LifterLMS is another lightweight E-Learning solution, that is very easy to use. Key features include:

Integration with WooCommerce and BuddyPress support
Support for certificates
Supports both Stripe and PayPal
Supports course scheduling and prerequisites

For a detailed review of Free LMS plugins for WordPress check out this blog on Free LMS Plugins

Membership WordPress Plugins

Membership 2

Membership 2 is the most widely used membership WordPress plugin. This is a free software, but has a paid pro version that offers added features.

Membership 2 is designed for ease-of-use for the beginner. It has a how-to guide to get you started with creating the course. Also Content access control and protection is made very easy with this plugin – for each lesson/ course you create you can select which membership levels to grant access to. Also Dripped content management is made very easy, and can be done on the same interface as the content protection. This makes managing your course much less complicated.

The pro version of Membership 2 integrates with both PayPal and Stripe payment solutions

WP eMember

Where Membership Pro relies on an easy-to-use interface and a free introductory membership plugin, WP eMember offers a robust membership WordPress plugin that offers both content protection and a large number of additional features, making this a great option for anyone looking for a complete WordPress membership plugin.

Using this wordpress plugin, it is easy to create multiple membership levels, and to grant differential access for different membership levels. Also in-page partial protection is available via easy to use shortcodes. Additional options include options to limit user access to minimize password sharing – effectively minimizing content piracy. Also there is support for Drip Content, which limits access to users based on their drip learning schedule.

eCommerce WordPress Plugins

eCommerce plugins can come quite handy for you in managing your course inventory, if you are selling multiple courses. An eCommerce plugin is not necessary for the new E-Learning developer, but if you wish to manage multiple courses, an integrated eCommerce plugin can come in quite handy for managing inventory.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce wordpress plugin offers hundreds of extensions and themes, that make it quite easy to available for WooCommerce, which makes it easy to add new features to your eLearning site. If you have worked on WordPress previously and are comfortable with the technical details of using WordPress, this WordPress Plugin is the best eCommerce solution for you.

Shopify

Shopify has a very easy interface, and is great for beginners who do not wish to go into technical details of using WP. It has a monthly subscription fees, but is worthwhile to use because of its hassle-free interface which allows you to get on with developing your course content without worrying about the technicalities. This WordPress plugin works with social networks such as Facebook Store, Buyable Pins and Twitter Buy buttons

WordPress Plugins for Videos

VdoCipher

Content security and smooth streaming are two integral features that any WordPress plugin for eLearning must offer. VdoCipher offers an easy to use shortcode, and is a complete video hosting solution. In VdoCipher one-time access is only granted to a fully encrypted stream after backend authentication from the host website, meaning that video security is maximized. VdoCipher has a 10 min install ready to go live plugin for all elearning video wordpress sites.

Package Video Streaming Solution

WP eMember as WordPress Membership Plugin: User Management Tutorial

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In this post we will describe in detail one of the most popular WordPress membership plugins – WP eMember. Membership plugins are necessary to manage users. Each membership corresponds to a user role, which determines access to content and other features on your website.

Using this WordPress membership plugin would help you in deciding what content to provide to which category of learner. Control of access to content eventually determines that you are able to monetize your content. We discuss how to implement Per user restriction on login time and preventing unauthorized access so that one paid member has maximum restrictions from sharing their access credentials. We have given the links to plugins at the end.

The biggest utility of membership plugins is to protect content in a Learning Management system. For suggestions on free LMS plugins to use in WordPress check this blog on Free WordPress LMS.

Specific case of protection for video membership site is also written in brief at end. Overall aim of the article is to ensure that maximum revenues from your content reaches you while you are able to continuously grow your subscriber base.

WordPress user access management

Membership 2 WordPress Plugin

WordPress Membership plugin is one of the most popular free membership plugins. This is the wizard page in the plugin, and guides you about how to set up your eLearning site.

WP eMember

WordPress eMember is a plugin that helps you manage memberships to your content. eMember offers various customizations – including integration with WordPress so that any account created for eMember would automatically make a corresponding WordPress account. You may make multiple membership levels depending on the level of access decided for the user. For example for a basic trial access to the site you may give users free access to a certain amount of content, or for a limited period of time. For this a free membership may be created.

Selective content protection and access

To protect content you can use two methods

Enabling custom protection and access through dashboard
Using shortcodes

Custom Protection

To enable general protection, go to the “WP eMember” button on the WordPress sidebar, and in the drop down menu go to “Membership Level” button.
From here go to the “Manage Content Protection” tab. Click on “Custom Posts” to see all the posts that make up your content. To protect some or all of these posts, select them and click on the “General Protection” option in the drop down menu at the top of the page. General Protection restricts access to all the posts that you select (you can select all posts or pick specific posts for protection).
After access restriction, the next step is to grant access according to the membership levels. For this go to the same drop down menu as the General Protection option, and select each membership levels. The resulting files will be files that are restricted from access.
You can select the files for which you want to grant access , and after selecting, click the “Grant Access” button. You can make various membership levels, each differentiated by the number of pages that access is granted to.

Using shortcodes

Alternatively, partial content protection may be implemented using this wordpress membership plugin. For this you can make use of shortcodes to grant partial access to pages. Suppose you have two membership levels, Membership Regular and Membership Lite. You might wish to grant access to only the Membership Regular users, having level id 4. For this you can use the shortcode:

“[emember_protected for=4]”

“[/emember_protected]”

Suppose that level id 3 corresponds to Membership Lite. You can grant access to a section to both Membership Regular and Lite users. To do that you can enclose it in this shortcode:

“[emember_protected for=3-4]”

Note that membership levels to which access is to be granted are added using the dashes. Without specifying the membership ids, ie “[emember_protected]” – content is limited to logged in users only, including free registered users.

General eMember settings

WP eMember offers multiple options using which you can customize membership experience of users. These include the option to:

Decide if you wish to grant free memberships
Offer attractive login page – so that a popup appears rather than redirecting to a login page

Limited muliple logins To Your WordPress Membership Plugin

Limiting number of IPs used from a membership per day, so as to discourage password sharing
Disabling simultaneous login, again to discourage password sharing

Encouraging Membership Renewals

eMember also has features that encourage memberships renewals upon expiry. These include

Triggering auto expiry email notifications shortly before account expiry date
Allowing expired memberships to move to free membership status, to protect continuity
Generating special renewal membership links.

Besides this, eMember offers options for integration into wordpress, so that logging in to eMember would automatically log you into wordpress. The very large number of customization options that WP eMember offers makes it one of the most useful WordPress membership plugin.

Drip Content

You can structure access to your learners so that the release of course material is done periodically. This method of releasing course material, called drip content management, limits the amount of information accessible at once to the user. This prevents your learners from being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the course. The auto-upgrade feature in this WordPress membership plugin allows for dripped content management, although this entails making multiple courses.

Auto-upgrade feature

According to this feature, using WP eMember you may upgrade a member taking Module 1 of your course to Module 2 automatically after a thirty day period (or a 7-day period, according to how you wish to structure your course). So, if there are say 5 modules to one course, each module to be accessed 30 days from the previous module, you may time the auto upgrade feature so that

Module 1 -> 2: 30 days from start of course
Module 2 -> 3: 60 days from start of course
Module 3 -> 4: 90 days from start of course
Module 4 -> 5: 120 days from start of course

Pros and Cons of Drip Content Management

There is a debate regarding the merits of drip content management policy – a negative of this approach is that it dictates that learners follow the particular pace with which you have structured the course. The other side of the coin is that you are ensuring that you do not overwhelm your learners with too much information.

Prevent Concurrent Login plugin with WordPress Membership Plugin

A major concern for eLearning site managers is the possibility that their content may be shared by multiple users using a single login. Password sharing is a problem that eMember does address, through the previously mentioned settings of limiting number of IPs and the option to disable concurrent login.

In case the WordPress membership plugin that you use does not have the option to prevent simultaneous logins, a plugin that that specifically prevents concurrent login is the “Prevent Concurrent Login” plugin. This is a plugin that you only need to activate, and store in the Must Use category of plugins, for it to run silently in the background. It then by default prevent access to your membership system from multiple systems at the same time. You may use this plugin with any wordpress membership plugin, including the widely used WordPress Membership 2 plugin, and Wishlist Member, both of which rival WP eMember in popularity.

Video Membership site with eMember

For many premium video businesses like elearning & media , the necessity to protect video content from piracy by so many free downloaders, plugins , hacks is a must. Most of video streaming providers like youtube, vimeo, or self hosting doesnot allow for any protection. To restrict the access of your video content to only only your subscribers on wordpress, VdoCipher has come up with a secure video streaming solution based on encryption and watermarking.

The plugin enables you to use a custom short code. You can use the plugin and the shortcode with any wordpress membership plugin. Also as explained in the eMember section protection code, you can design your course to allow free registered access to trial learners and paid membership for the video. For this you only need to place the VdoCipher shortcode inside the sectional protection shortcode.

Links:

WordPress page for the e-member plugin

Prevent concurrent Login plugin

VdoCipher secure video streaming account signup, 5 GB Free Trial

WordPress course plugin to make course website – Sensei tutorial

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Building a course website in WordPress is a great way to monetize your education content. It is being done quite effectively by individuals and companies across the globe. In this blog post we shall walk you through the steps necessary to install the very useful Sensei wordpress course plugin. Using Sensei, you can set up WordPress to sell online courses. By using the plugins features and integrating them with secure Vdocipher player for videos, you can sell online courses to your target audience more effectively.

The quality and security of videos is the USP for most companies that wish to sell online courses. VdoCipher provides the required necessary offerings so that you may not lose customers to piracy and your students have a great experience.

Installing Sensei as a wordpress course plugin

It is assumed that you have WordPress already installed on your system. Sensei is a paid plugin. To buy the course plugin you would have to buy the course directly from their parent site WooCommerce here. Prices as of October 2016 for the Sensei plugin are $129 for the single site version.

Use Sensei to sell online courses

On buying the Sensei WordPress course plugin you could download the plugin file in zip format. To activate the plugin you would need to copy the license key that you will find in your Woothemes account to the wordpress interface for activation. After activation you will get this:

wordpress course plugin for secure video hosting

List of wordpress plugins

Using Sensei – Courses, Modules and Lessons

Sensei allows for a layered structuring for courses – each course can be divided into multiple modules, which can contain the relevant lessons. A module can itself be divided into sub-modules, and therefore this LMS allows for considerable flexibility in how you might wish to structure and present your course.

The first step is to therefore create a course. After creating your course, you can create a module, and select the relevant course in which the module is to be integrated. Lessons can then be created within the modules, and you can easily integrate videos within lessons using the steps given below.

Lessons are easily designed to help sell online courses

Setting up a lesson

As shown above, the interface to create a lesson is quite straightforward in Sensei. The ease with which a multi-layered course can be built using Sensei is why we recommend that you use this LMS to sell online courses.

For managing learners, Sensei has tabs for Analysis, Grading and Learner Management. Using Sensei you can track the updates to the course through the Data Updates tab. The simplicity of these options mean that teachers and site administrators can easily manage learners taking their courses. Because of this as a site administrator you can improve your site more effectively using learner feedback.

Quiz implementation in Sensei

Quizzes for grading learners can be added onto the end of the respective lessons. Using Sensei’s interface you can make multiple questions, decide whether passing the quiz is necessary to complete the course and the passing criteria. You may add questions directly to the lesson or add questions from a question bank. Questions may also be presented in a random manner.

Customization offered by Sensei to sell online courses

Sensei offers an additional WordPress course plugin – the Sensei Course Progress plugin – free of cost for monitoring course progress by lessons within a course (or within a module)

Sensei offers you control over who to allow to access the course. Access can be limited to registered users through their wordpress accounts, otherwise if you are using another plugin such as eMember or eShop to control access the feature to restrict access directly on Sensei may be left unused. We recommend using eMember to control membership access because of it allows you to create multiple membership levels depending on level of access.

Further customization allows for private messages between learners and teachers – enabling this functionality may depend upon the targeted size of learners and the ability of teachers to participate.

Sensei offers Javascript functionality in terms of a dynamic bar providing information about percentage of course completed, while My Courses tab also uses Javascript. These functionalities may also be disabled.

Have a look at the following screenshots to learn about additional customization offered by Sensei.

Sensei Shortcodes

Sensei offers a number of shortcodes by which you can remind learners of all available courses, accessible by categories such as teachers. You may also add shortcodes for courses being taken by the learner, additional courses that the learner may take, and user messages.

All available courses [sensei_courses]

Courses per user [sensei_user_courses] (the previous shortcode [usercourses] is no longer supported)

Course page [sensei_course_page id = “123”]

Unpurchased courses [sensei_unpurchased_courses]

Secure Video Streaming in Sensei

To prevent illegal video download , sharing and provide best streaming experience to your viewers, we at VdoCipher provide ready to use video wordpress course plugin. The plugin runs at backend and allows encrypted streaming + viewer watermark player embed on your site. It is compatible with any other plugins you use in your wordpress. VdoCipher has education customers all across 6 continents using us. To install VdoCipher plugin on your wordpress account, you first need to create an account at VdoCipher.com. A trial account at VdoCipher can be made for free. You can upload & stream upto 5GB worth of content for secure video streaming. With each video that you would have uploaded you would have a corresponding video id.

The video can then be embedded onto the lesson by applying the following code: [vdo id="id_of_video"] For example: [vdo id="123abc4d56e7fg89shi12"]

User Registration, Analytics, Themes, Grading with Sensei

Sensei is a complete e-learning suite and involves easy to use management features to do the above implementation.

A note on Woocommerce

WooCommerce is an ecommerce wordpress plugin and necessarily works at backend of Sensei. So, first installation of Woocommerce is needed and then sensei. It is free and is compatible with all major plugins including ours.

Important Elearning blogs from VdoCipher

Why not to self host videos for your course web site?

How to make money from education videos: Some models & key considerations ?

Encrypted Video Streaming: How VdoCipher is far ahead of Others in Security ?

Watermark user/time specific dynamic variables on WordPress videos

For a free full version 5 GB free trial at VdoCipher , Register.

Custom variables as watermark on wordpress videos

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Watermark on videos adds extra security for the video from screen capture by adding variables such as email, IP or date information to the videos. Custom variables is now supported in plugin 1.6

Till version 1.5 of our WordPress plugin, watermark on videos could only have a limited number of dynamic variables. With version 1.6, we have now added filter hooks on the annotation code to enable other plugins or themes to change the annotation code.

You can now add a custom filter to the hook `vdocipher_annotate_preprocess` . Example code for adding custom filter is:

function customfunc($vdo_annotate_code){
 $customVariable = "Hello world";
 $vdo_annotate_code = str_replace('{var1}', $customVariable, $vdo_annotate_code);
 return $vdo_annotate_code;
}

$er = add_filter('vdocipher_annotate_preprocess', 'customfunc');

The above code enables you to replace the token {var1} with the value of $customVariable. You can then use an annotation code like:

[
{'type':'rtext', 'text':'Your IP : {ip}', 'alpha':'0.8', 'color':'0xFF0000','size':'12','interval':'5000'},
{'type':'text', 'text':'{var1}', 'alpha':'0.5' , 'x':'150', 'y':'100', 'color':'0xFF0000', 'size':'12'}
]

This code on going through the above filter will become

[
{'type':'rtext', 'text':'Your IP : {ip}', 'alpha':'0.8', 'color':'0xFF0000','size':'12','interval':'5000'},
{'type':'text', 'text':'Hello world', 'alpha':'0.5' , 'x':'150', 'y':'100', 'color':'0xFF0000', 'size':'12'}
]

This function can be placed in the functions.php file in your theme. It is recommended to create a child theme before making such edits. The theme

Adding video specific watermark

With this tool, you can also set custom variables for different video or wire up your own logic using any WordPress parameters.

Quickest Way to Start Your Video Selling Site

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Are you looking to setup a website to market and sell your video content online? At VdoCipher we have worked extensively with businesses newly entering the video selling market. Most new entrants in the field are unsure about their video hosting requirements, and for this reason are unaware of the features and functionalities that they should prioritize. Also prices of many Online Video Platforms are hugely inflated, making startups reluctant to invest in video hosting because of the huge costs for their full feature set.

At VdoCipher we are committed to offering our full feature set to all customers, irrespective of their size. We offer customizable plans for early stage video content providers, so that they can try our services to their full satisfaction before committing with a bigger plan.

Setting up your video selling website requires multiple stages:

Setting up your tech platform – What tech do you use? Code from PHP/Node.Js, CMS like WordPress and Joomla, or ready-made template sites.
Deciding and implementing a suitable theme
Evaluating the features and functionalities of your video selling site
Choosing and setting up an Online Video Platform

How to set up the Tech Platform for Your Video Selling Site?

When setting up a website for selling your videos online you need to evaluate your requirements in terms of features and functionalities. If you do not have highly specific requirements you can opt for hosting on WordPress. Adding plugins to your WordPress site is a great way to increase the features of your website. Making sites on WordPress is also quite straightforward, and the time to set up such a website would be somewhere in the range of 7-10 days. Do watch the video below, or check out this blog for a more detailed explanation on the tech platforms available for hosting your online video selling site.

Why You Need an Online Video Platform for Your Video Selling Site?

When faced with the exorbitant prices that many Online Video Platforms charge, you may have considered to self-host your videos. This is not a great idea, as you need to put in dedicated effort to add each one of the following features:

Security for your Video Content
Analytics to understand the viewership of your video content
Customization to video player
Multiple Bitrates and Encoding for Multi-screen Streaming
Setting up a Cloud Storage and Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Select Plugins and Themes for Your Video Selling WordPress Website

We’ll make a strong case for you to setup your video selling site on WordPress. These are quite easy to implement, and you can integrate a membership plugin with them to restrict content according to free and paying subscribers. For E-Learning website specifically we list the most useful E-Learning plugins. A detailed review of the WooCommerce Sensei LMS is given here.

Check out this LMS theme from ThemeForest for integrating custom themes to the Sensei plugin. VideoPress is also another great theme for developing a video-based website.

Setting up Payments

For payments, you have options from Paypal , Beanstream and Stripe. Various options are mentioned in this link. You can add WooCommerce or Shopify to smoothen the payment process for your WordPress website.

Using VdoCipher To Sell Your Videos Online

VdoCipher has a ready to use plugin for WordPress. It is compatible with all WordPress themes and plugins. Encryption, backend authentication and dynamic watermarking features make VdoCipher the most secure solution in the market. It allows multiple bitrate streaming on player. On daily basis, you can see the analytics. You can integrate VdoCipher WordPress plugin using shortcodes.

WordPress video plugin : Embed secure videos on site

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WordPress is the fastest means to a working website and is used by developers across the world to create awesome websites with minimal effort. Integrating a secure video streaming service in WordPress to host video membership sites is becoming increasingly popular. Here we explain how best to best integrate the VdoCipher video player. Using the VdoCipher WordPress video plugin will help you securely stream videos on your site, helping you in increasing revenues.

VdoCipher is the most secure video streaming and hosting solution for WordPress videos. Encryption, dynamic watermarking with viewer detail and authentication provides highest protection from video piracy. VdoCipher provides a nice smooth player to have your viewers best video streaming experience.

How to integrate WordPress video plugin ?

Here is a guide to install WP plugin for video, embed a player on WordPress posts and pages and protect your content from unauthorized downloads. Our plugin makes it easier to protect videos on WordPress from getting downloaded.

Use VdoCipher WordPress Video Plugin for Secure video hosting

WordPress plugin page for VdoCipher

Below is a sample video with dynamic watermark features enabled. We have received multiple requests for providing a simpler solution for our API. To cater to users using WordPress for their site, we are launching the first version of our plugin. This plugin should simplify the process of using VdoCipher. The 1.0 version is capable for basic functionality and takes out the effort from API implementation.

Here are the steps one needs to follow.

1. Create account on VdoCipher. Upon sign up, you will receive a “client secret key” on your email. This key is very much like your password, so its essential that you keep it safe. You shall need to use this key while making any API calls or while using our plugins.

2. On your WordPress dashboard, search for “VdoCipher” on Add plugins page.

3. Click “Install now” . This will install our WordPress video plugin.

4. Click on the link “Activate this plugin”. On the top, you shall see a message. “Click here to configure VdoCipher”.

5. In the next page, enter the client secret key you received in Step 1.

That’s it, if everything went well, you should be shown a status: ready message. Now, you can add videos to your VdoCipher dashboard and get the video id. Then, create posts and pages with your videos embedded on them. Just use the below shortcode for it, replacing aaaaaaaa with the real video id.

[vdo id="aaaaaaaa"]

Watermark your video with text and image

You can use our watermark feature inside the plugin to add text and images on your videos. Adding moving text with viewer information is an extra deterrent to people sharing recorded videos and tracking such point of leakages. You can configure the plugin to add annotation over your videos.

You need to set up “annotation code” in the Settings > VdoCipher page. Go to plugins > VdoCipher> settings > annotation statement, and put the watermark code there. This code tells us how and what to embed over your videos. You can make the annotation code automatically by inputting text/image, size and color directly here in the dashboard -> Config -> Watermark Tool section. A sample watermark code for dynamic text watermark is given here below.

[

{‘type’:’rtext’, ‘text’:’ {ip}’, ‘alpha’:’0.20′, ‘color’:’0x000000′,’size’:’12’,’interval’:’2000′},

{‘type’:’text’, ‘text’:’ {date.h:i:s A}’, ‘alpha’:’0.30′ , ‘x’:’60’, ‘y’:’200′, ‘color’:’0x000000′, ‘size’:’11’,’interval’:’3000′},

{‘type’:’rtext’, ‘text’:’ {email}’, ‘alpha’:’0.20′, ‘color’:’0x000000′,’size’:’12’,’interval’:’2000′},

{‘type’:’rtext’, ‘text’:’ {username}’, ‘alpha’:’0.20′, ‘color’:’0x000000′,’size’:’12’,’interval’:’2000′},

]

For further details on creating your annotation code, read on here: Add watermark over videos

Once set, the annotation code is applied over all VdoCipher videos in your WordPress. If you want a particular video not to show the annotation, you need to pass another attribute to the short-code.

[vdo id="aaaaaaa" no_annotate='true']

Sell videos online

For selling videos online, VdoCipher is an extremely good option to protect your content from being freely distributed. You can set up an e-commerce video platform with WordPress itself.

One option would be to set up a membership site with multiple subscription options. This way your customers can pay a subscription fees and get access to content according to the level of subscription they buy. Such a system can be set up using membership plugin.

WooCommerce Pay Per View With VdoCipher plugin for secure video hosting

Similarly, you can have a pay-per-view option for your platform where your visitors have to pay a one-time charge for watching a video. You can restrict the number of times and for how much duration you want to give access to the content. Such a system can be set up with WooCommerce plugin. You might have to use another plugin Woocommerce pay per post to achieve this. You can further customize the plugin for the restrictions and user flow that you might like to achieve.

For some useful tips and suggested practices while setting up a video based e-commerce platform, read Make money from e-learning videos .

If you are looking to create video e-commerce platform online or just want to protect your online videos on WordPress, go ahead and use our wordpress video plugin. In case you have any feedback, suggestions or bugs, we would be happy to hear from you at info@vdocipher.com

So, try out our WordPress video plugin. Try the free full version 5 GB trial at www.vdocipher.com for protecting WordPress videos from download. Secure, Smooth and Affordable video streaming solution.

Watermark user/time specific dynamic variables on WordPress videos

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To check and download the WordPress plugin, please go http://wordpress.org/plugins/vdocipher/

While adding videos watermark or annotation code on vdocipher videos using the WordPress plugin, you can configure the text to fetch dynamic user variables. These variables can be user name, email or date in custom format. Here is the complete list of variables which can be used in the annotation code.

{name} : This shows the display name of the user who is viewing the video. This calls the function: wp_get_current_user()->display_name

{email} : wp_get_current_user()->user_email

{username} : wp_get_current_user()->user_login

{id} : wp_get_current_user()->ID

{ip} : $_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’]

{date} : This function allows you to configure the video to show date in custom format. You can use the predefined PHP date constants to display date. The format is {date.pattern}, where pattern will be the input of PHP’s date function.

preg_replace_callback('/\{date\.([^\}]+)\}/', function($matches)
{
   return date($matches[1]);
} , $vdo_annotate_code);

An example code using the above variable tokens:

[
{'type':'rtext', 'text':'Your IP : {ip}', 'alpha':'0.8', 'color':'0xFF0000','size':'12','interval':'5000'},
{'type':'text', 'text':'Time: {date.h:i:s A}', 'alpha':'0.5' , 'x':'150', 'y':'100', 'color':'0xFF0000', 'size':'12'}
]

Check example video for the above code here: https://www.vdocipher.com/blog/2014/12/add-text-to-videos-with-watermark/

Currently, the WordPress plugin supports a single annotation parameter across the website. If you must have a video without the annotation, you need to add a no_annotate parameter [vdo id="aaaaaaa" no_annotate="true"]