Good Website Examples?

Biggest trick there is the authentication part.  In order to be able to set up user accounts and control their access to courses can certainly add a level of complication to a site.  Also, is it going to be important to track progress and scores?  If so you will most likely need some limited LMS functionality.  There are a number of LMS systems out there that are available for free that support SCORM lessons for tracking, though I can't say any of them are terribly attractive, and it might add a lot more functions then you are interested in having on the site.  Another relatively simple possibility if your not looking to track progress or scores is using a WordPress site.  Though originally it started out as primarily a blog CMS it has really come a long way.  There are literally thousands of themes out there to give you the look you want, and with it's built in authentication system you can set it up so that users need to log in before they can access a particular page on the site that has a list of links to launch the various courses.  Of course Articulate Online could also be an option.

Hope that helps a bit.

Hi Tim,

I have created some prototypes and demos of user management systems that you can view / test at our QuizReporter site. Although these prototypes are for quizzes, the same ideas could also be applied for courses.

Recently, one of my clients wanted to charge a fee for their Articulate courses located on their website. I started to develop a member registration, access and tracking system. It proved to be too much work. So after some extensive research I discovered VibraLogiix's SiteLok which is very affordable and works great for their application. The challenge was to find a program that controlled access to the courses and automatically expired their registration (and access) after a set period of time. SiteLok does this well.

Some ideas to explore.

Russ 

Thanks for the input so far. 

I think one of my biggest concerns would be the ability of any future website to attract and draw in potential students.  Actually the way I learned about Articulate was via a CME (continuing medical education) website that hosted a program created in Articulate.  The CME website itself was quite "dry", and in fact, so was the Articulate-generated program (no fault of Articulate but rather the authors themselves). 

What I discovered is that I had to seek out this program (did not readily show in internet search), and once found, it wasn't presented to me in an attractive and marketable way.  I have no doubt that this company has lost a lot of potential sales purely because most lose interest in the product within seconds of visiting the website.  At $375 (the cost of the program), it doesn't take many "lost sales" to add up.  I chose the course because I had to and luckily, as "dry" as the program was, it was still extremely helpful.  

I am absolutely confident that the program I'm working on has merit and appeal for those that could benefit from it...but all of that means nothing if poor marketing fails to draw them in.  I suppose that's the crux of my concern and the reason I'd like to see some good websites that fit this bill.

Tim

You may have a look at these sites:

http://www.egotailor.com/

http://www.deluxsey.com/

http://www.tikibambooandthatch.com/

Simple but really nice designs I think.

One option would be to host a standard website, which could be built on a CMS like Wordpress if you like. This can be made very search engine friendly, you could even include snippets of your courses for free or maybe the odd free module to entice people in.

This then links into your LMS, again many to choose from, but for example you could use something like Moodle which you can skin (use a template) to resemble your website to deal with the course management, registration, score reporting etc..