E-Learning Heroes - Advice and ideas from the Articulate Community

Hi. Yesterday I had an interview for an ID job. I sent the interviewer a zipped Articuluate course that I had done for a previous client, along with instructions to unzip/extract files first, then click player icon to launch & view the course.  They were unable to open the course. I aksed about pop ups and firewalls, etc. Nonetheless, they were unable to view my work and they were not impressed at all with that.

Can someone send some steps on how I can get this Articulate course and others in my work portfolio onto my website? Since some of the work is proprietary, I think i want to have it password protected so I can monitor who can view the portfolio but would also like a sample demo that anyone can view.

Hi Terri,

The easiest way to share your projects with clients is to use Dropbox:

http://www.screenr.com/SCg

If you're worried about security, it would be very difficult to guess the URL of the Dropbox file. 

Hi Terri.  If I understand your question, I would check with the hosting service of your website for instructions on getting content onto your website--as they should have the info you need to connect to your site for file transferring.  In most cases, you'll use FTP software (such as the freeware Filezilla) to upload your content. However, each hosting service is different, and may have other tools to use.

Once you've determined how to upload content, you would publish an Articulate course using the "Web" option, and upload the published directory (make sure there's no spaces or odd characters in the name) to your website.  From there, you can give customers a link to the "player.html" file or "launcher.html" file (depending on other options you choose).

As for the password protection aspect you're considering, the first thought is to implement a JavaScript approach. 

Brian's suggestion of Dropbox would be much easier to implement.  But one caveat:  some company firewalls (including mine) block Dropbox and similar sites.

Hope that helps a little bit...

Hi Terri - I am in a similar situation - I want to put a demo course on my website, and I also want to make it password protected.  How did you finally resolve this issue?  I'm not looking at something like Dropbox, I want them to see my actual website... Thanks for your reply....or anyone else's who feels they can assist!

Hi Karen

One option is to build your site (or at least a spin-off) in Wordpress because this allows you to 'embed' your courses in a page or post and have them password protected.

I say "spin-off" because if you already have a non-WP website then you may not want to go through the hassle of rebuilding it.  Hence a WP presence will do what you want:

• Publish course to Web
• Upload (via FTP) published folder to say a custom folder, e.g. "/demos"
• Create new WP post or page
• Make a link (in your post of page) that launches (I think from memory) the player.html file in that folder

Another option is to use a SCORM-oriented service like SCORM Cloud.  It's great for hosting a bunch of demos for free, but has a habit IME of randomly expiring your user logins.  Worth checking out though.

IME Dropbox is great for lighter courses - not so good for those that are more image/speed intensive because DB is not renowned for its speed when used in this manner.

Hi Simon

Thanks for your reply, I had just logged out but as it came to email I thought I’d log back on!

I’m currently building my website using WordPress, so I should be able to follow your instructions below.  One question tho, I have already ‘published to the web’ but the zip file resides in a folder on my hard drive….do I need to ‘republish’ to be able to upload?  Or if not, how would I upload the existing file?

Thanks again

Karen

No need to zip them at all Karen.  Use an FTP tool, e.g. FileZilla (it's free) to upload the published folder to WP.  You'll need your WP details to make the connection via FTP to begin with.

Once uploaded, grab the link of the (I think) 'player.html' file and make a note of it.  This is what you want to reference in your post or page when launching.

e.g. let's say you upload your folder to: www.nameofsite.com/demos ... which means your launch URL will probably be something like www.nameofsite.com/demos/nameofcourse/anotherfolder/player.html.

I say 'anotherfolder' because can't remember the name of the folders that AP publishes to Web.

HTH

Hi Karen,

Another option is to use the plugin in the link below to upload your content into Wordpress:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/insert-or-embed-articulate-content-into-wordpress/