Laurie 8 years, 4 months ago-
Posts
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Hola amigos,
I’m back here at the Temple after a wild ride in Funelle Caves. Really cool stuff, although now I am trying to make sure that all my platforms and plugins are going to get along. Right now it’s helping just to try and get the big picture, and to promise myself I’m going to do the best I can with what I’ve got.
Here’s what I got:
-Zippy courses
-Thrive membership
-Thrive ApprenticeA year ago when I got the idea for this course I went out and bought Zippy Courses. I’ve messed around with it some but I haven’t gone through the entire process of creating and selling a course on it. I did, however, find a good tutorial tonight that kinda sorta shows how Zippy is compatible with Thrive Content Builder:
https://www.udemy.com/how-to-create-a-wordpress-membership-site-with-zippycourses/learn/v4/overview
I’m also happy to say I just got the Thrive membership so I can use the content builder for my UCSE5000, and I also love their Minus Theme for my main site. I was poking around the Minus theme and I am really intrigued about their Apprentice pages and lessons and such, and I was wondering if that might be a good road to go down? BUT then wouldn’t I need to purchase another software to run the membership site?
I want to use what I have, so maybe I should just keep moving forward with zippy courses and maybe attempt learning/using the Apprentice stuff later?
However I would like to have some kind of membership program for my students so they can upload their artwork for critiques and such.
A question on domains…
Another thing- a year ago I set up my zippy courses on a subdomain, courses.jessicaantonelli.com. However, going through the Great Ecourse Adventure I went ahead and bought my own domain just for the course and maybe other offshoots of it, 10stepstodrawing.com.
I’ve been googling for ages, but I still want to figure out how to best combine all these components.
I guess I’ll see if I can use the Thrive content builder on [either my subdomain or new domain] to get my UCSE5000 set up, and link that to the Zippy courses page somehow.@Andyfriest I would so appreciate your genius applied to this situation. I feel like a kid playing with a puzzle, and I know I have all the pieces, just not exactly how they fit together, or if someone stuck an extra piece in there or something. Darn kids.
I’m currently working on editing the footage I have into videos for my UCSE5000, so I’m looking forward to figuring this out, the top of the mountain is in sight! (although veeeeeery far away still I think!)
Thanks for following along in the adventure, and I’d love to hear from anyone else using some combination of these platforms and plugins 🙂 ciao!
I’ve heard Zippy Courses doesn’t play well with others and should be on its own domain (or subdomain).
I’ve used Thrive Apprentice as a user and was not horribly impressed. I’d say do your UCSE5k and preferred Thrive theme on the main site, then Zippy on a subdomain with its own WordPress install.
Feel free to ping me if you need a technical nudge or want to talk through it all.
Dear Jessica and Wayne:
Firstly your music course looks tempting Jessica-a great sign. This is a big step up the mountain.
Like you Jessica, I bought zippy about a year ago and started creating my course there, with its own domain. I am moving ahead well with my course content, but am continually challenged with each technical piece. I had someone install active campaign onto zippy about 2 weeks ago and that was an adventure. So, like you Jessica I am now wondering which pieces of thrive I need, how to use it and how it will all interface. Basically, I am stuck. So, Dr. Wayne, Andy, do you know of anyone who can install this at an affordable rate. And thanks Jessica for bringing this issue up and giving the address for the udemy site!
First off, I wouldn’t use Thrive Apprentice. I’ve tried it, and it just doesn’t quite cut it.
That said, theres no reason (to my knowledge) that you can’t use Zippy Courses with a Thrive Theme/Content Builder.
Yes I have heard that Zippy is best on its own domain, though that is essentially the way we recommend anyways.
Zippy Courses is a course/membership plugin – not a theme.. Although from what I understand it DOES come with its own theme, but it isn’t required you use it.
So in your case Jessica, I’d recommend you use a Thrive Theme (Minus) and Thrive Content Builder for the look and layout, and then use Zippy Courses for your course structure and payments.
There is absolutely no reason why you can’t have EVERYTHING on one single domain for your course.
When you have a main website/parent brand, AND a course thats different from the brand, then its a good idea to have separate domains. But having your UCSE pages and your course together is fine. That’s what we did here. Its all on thegreatecourseadventure.com (we got rid of the enjoy.gea.com subdomain)
Laurie – Master ZenTeach offers course setup services.. You can check out his website here to book a call and explore what he can do for you: http://zenteach.com
Okay, I’m back to report a big aha moment!
Learning how to use wordpress for my online course has been very humbling. I realized I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how all the plugins work, and so I was imagining everything falling apart or sending me to some unaccountably horrifying error page when I tried to create my course site.
Once I actually got into action, I saw how the plugins all made way for each other and the themes and content builders were all very friendly and things are fine. I’m amazed how much I built it up in my head!
In fact, there’s a big moral wrapped around my whole aha moment. This afternoon was like a pig-in-a-blanket epiphany. The pig was that I learned that the Thrive content builder is a plugin and not a theme, as I’d mistakenly thought. The blanket is that I realized how my students are going to feel when they are facing gaps in their knowledge that seem too big and scary to get past. Learning to draw, like learning how to make an ecourse, is some seriously scary ego-busting stuff! I am definitely benefiting big time from having this space to share this struggle and hope that it helps others, so I want to make sure my students also have a forum for these kinds of conversations.
Any thoughts on membership sites? I might just kick off with a Facebook group for my 1st launch since it’s something I actually already know how to do, and people could easily upload their artwork photos for critiques.
@andyfreist thanks so much for moving me along in the right direction! @laurieszott good luck, we’ll figure it out! @waynebuckhanan I am sure I will be in touch soon with another something that’s puzzling me, I so appreciate you reaching out!
Thanks for sharing this Jessica. I love your insights-pig in a blanket, very funny! Great for you. I am getting I really don’t understand this latest piece of the puzzle and am being a bit swished around by the funnel. I am impressed you were able to do this technological piece by yourself-great inspiration, Jess.
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