Modern Stack Learndash Development

If you are considering the most popular WordPress plugin for your business, you’re on the right path. This platform is rapidly developing and the third version of it has recently been released. It solves all the known issues in course and user management and provides even more opportunities for e-learning. 

If you want to stand out among your competitors, you need to understand some of the limitations and challenges of this platform and how they can be addressed with the help of modern technology.

Customization Issues

This solution is built on a classic of the WordPress solution scheme. Here the Frontend is not separated from the Backend, so the display on the front part is made with PHP WordPress files.

As a result, business owners are limited in the look that the primary theme for Learndash offers, without being able to customize it significantly. All attempts at customization are based on the lack of capabilities of the outdated stack and, as a result, only build up the Legacy code. As a result, after a few customizations, such decisions virtually cease to allow further changes and things have to be rewritten from scratch or reconciled.

Headless technologies can solve this problem. WordPress has an apparent RestAPI design. With only a few settings, you can ensure full data transfer through RestAPI to the front and write Frontend using advanced ReactJS based methodologies. This will give your project virtually unlimited flexibility for experiments, while still having convenient administration and standard features.

Learn more about common issues with eCourse sites.

Extension Issues  

Today, a modern course management solution should combine several technologies to set up different models of user interaction, for example: 

• Learndash for course management, 
• WordPress for content management, 
• WooCommerce for sales, 
• WooCommerce Subscription, 
• Membership, 
• Bookings. 

It would be ideal if you could also transfer data to other platforms for content and marketing.

Unless you have a specific API for your platform all of these things will make your project awkward and uncomfortable, slow, or inaccessible.

To solve this problem, like the previous one, you need a solution headset.

Mobile Commerce and Apps

For better engagement and the best user experience for your audience, as well as improved SEO, you need the kind  mobile experience that only mobile apps can provide.

Due to the limitations of the standard Learndash themes, building a clear mobile version or layout for your resource is virtually impossible, meaning your audience will move to competitors who have more convenient applications.

Classically, app development is a complicated and costly task and comes with a 2-3 fold budget increase for Android and iOS development. However, today there is an alternative that allows you to combine the web and mobile experience in one place – the Progressive Web Application.

As you develop or transfer your resource to technology headsets, this opportunity will also become available to you.

Site Performance

Site performance is a classic problem for all the water resources that use multiple plugins and still require a lot of dynamics, such as Learndash projects. This makes it virtually impossible to achieve the kind of performance dictated by the modern world – not even cache plugins help, as they work very poorly with dynamics.

However, a solution to this is GatsbyJS, a library for ReactJS. This technology allows you to compile your resource in the form of static pages and then place it on any CDN hosting. Opening pages will take ten-tenths of a second, and users will receive an experience that was previously only available for non-native applications.

Read more: Jamstack

How to Transit to New Technologies 

If you decide to give a new impetus to your business or plan to develop Learndash, here’s what you have to know:

1. It will help if you are clear about what features the base build provides
2. It will help if you define how you’d like to expand and which components to add.

Your requirements for eCommerce, user management, and content management – which are not included in Lernesh’s basic build – will significantly affect the final complexity and, therefore, the cost of your project.

If you would like detailed advice on the process and capabilities, see our service Developing LMS sites.