Kingster – Education, School WordPress

Publishing a course and selling it are two different setups

A university needs an applicant to find the degree, read the program and learn how to apply. An online academy needs to charge, grant access to lessons and grade quizzes. Both say "I have courses", and an education theme can look valid for either until the first student arrives.

Kingster, by GoodLayers, handles that difference with two kinds of course that are not the same thing. The static course, created in the Course content type, only shows information. The sellable course is created in the menu of LearnPress, the LMS plugin. So the first decision of your project is what kind of institution you are: if you only inform, LearnPress is unnecessary; if you sell, the catalog has to be born inside it.

The pages an educational institution needs, already planned

The theme brings six demos: University, Kindergarten, High School, College, Online School and Online Academy, the last two with LearnPress. The university one has two home pages and a menu that works as a guide for your own structure:

• Academics: undergraduate and graduate, with department, major, faculty, instructor and course pages.
• Admissions: application, campus tour, scholarships, athletics, giving, alumni and event calendar.
• Courses: course search and two listings.

Students can search and filter courses, and you can create custom filters for that search. Staff are managed through their own content type.

Design with the GoodLayers builder

• Its own drag-and-drop builder, with prebuilt pages and blocks, also available in posts and portfolio items.
• 19 headers and 6 footers, with top bar, secondary navigation and floating navigation.
• 14 blog, 9 portfolio and 6 gallery layouts.
• Full or boxed layout, with 100% fluid width.
• Typography: Google Fonts and upload of your own fonts in EOT or TTF.
• Color by section with custom skins for each builder wrapper.
• Maintenance or coming soon mode, and export and import of options, widgets and page templates.

What Kingster leaves to other plugins

Selling courses. It depends on LearnPress. The theme supports PayPal payment, and LearnPress adds other billing methods, some as paid add-ons, which you configure there.

Events. Kingster is compatible with The Events Calendar, a separate plugin.

Academic management. There is no official enrollment, student records or class timetables among its features. It is the public website of the institution, not its management system.

The demo images are not in the package either, so you will need your own photography.

How to install it, by type of course

The full package contains kingster.zip, which is the file you upload to WordPress. The base plugin goodlayers-core installs itself when the theme is activated.

1. Upload and activate the theme under Appearance, Themes.
2. Click Install Required Plugins on the Getting Start screen. If it does not appear, use Appearance, Install Plugins.
3. Check the Server Status tab, which shows the required server settings.
4. Import the demo from the Import Demo tab. If anything is missing, run the import again: it resumes where it stopped.
5. For informational courses, create the course under Course, Add New and add the Course Item element to a page.
6. To sell, install LearnPress and LearnPress Export Import, and import export-courses.xml, found in the LMS content folder of the package. This is a separate process from the normal import.

If training matters more than the institution

LearnPress is the LMS on which Kingster sells courses, and it lets you build curricula with lessons and quizzes. EduBlink is compatible with six course platforms, useful if you want to choose another LMS. Egrad is aimed at academies and exam preparation, with tests and mock exams.

Courses, students and payments in Kingster, explained

Can I sell a course created as a static course?

No. That type of course only shows information. To sell it, it has to be created in LearnPress.

Can I use the builder in LearnPress courses?

Yes, the GoodLayers builder works on the course description page.

Does it work for an academy without a campus?

Yes, with the Online School and Online Academy demos, which use LearnPress.

Can I run a shop as well as the courses?

Yes. WooCommerce is compatible, and the demo includes shop, cart, checkout and customer account.

Does it work in several languages?

Yes, it is compatible with WPML.