In this LMScast Chris Badgett advises you to ask, am I making a membership site, online course, or learning management system? There are differences between these formats you’ll need to know before you build your site.

A membership site is a simple content resource that requires a fee to access its newsletters, files, media, and other products. An online course is basically a class delivered through the internet that teaches students a subject, technique, or skill. A learning management system, or LMS, is a complete course offering with grading, testing, evaluation, and certification, plus other means of tracking and validating a student’s progress.

You may choose to start a simple membership site with a plan for scaling up to a full LMS in the future. Or you may want a blend of formats. But you can see the importance of knowing which kind of site you want to build before you even consider web hosting, technology, or software.

We’ve designed LifterLMS to help you create any of these options and ensure engagement with your audience using gamification, themes, media, easy integration with other tools, and interaction between students and instructors.

Get clear on the question of, am I making a membership site, online course, or learning management system? Then try a demo of LifterLMS at demo.lifterlms.com to see how our development platform can help you build it.