To create a course you can follow our guide on Creating Your Course. In that guide we show how to create the course and briefly touched on how to add course content.
In this guide we are going to show you how you can add your modules, chapters, and lessons.
The first step to add content to your course is to click “Add New Content”
You’ll then be able to choose what type of content to add. As you can see below, you’ll be able to choose between adding a Lesson, Module, and Chapter.
It should be noted that Chapters are merely a placeholder to help divide content, but it is not a content page itself. Chapters can simply be used to break up content into different sections when using elements such as our Lesson & Module List.
Modules and Lessons are content pages, but one thing to be aware of is when you use our Lesson buttons, moving from one lesson to the next lesson, Modules are skipped. This is because a module page is not really a lesson page, and as such, should not be used for including content that could be consumed for training purposes.
The best use for modules would be to give an overview of what the module will teach someone, and to have a list of the lessons included in that module. This is what most of our module page templates include.
Special Note: When you add a module or Chapter, all lessons must be assigned to a module or chapter.
Adding Modules
To add a Module, click on “Add Module” and choose the template you want.
You’ll automatically be shown our best Module templates, but you can also choose from the full template library if you like.
Once you choose a template you’ll be able to edit the options for the module.
- Module title
- Module Summary
- Whether to enable the Preview
- Module Slug
- Placeholder image
- Taxonomies the module belongs to.
When you are finished with these settings, click the “Save Changes” button (shown in the image above in the bottom right corner).
You’ll now see the module in the course builder
Adding Chapters
Adding Chapters is easy. Just choose the Add Chapter option.
Then you’ll choose which module to add the chapter to if you are using modules. You don’t have to use modules to be able to use chapters. If a module doesn’t exist and you have only created lessons, then all the lessons will be added to that chapter. If you add additional chapters then you can drag existing lessons into that chapter. For demo purposes we are showing adding a chapter to a module.
Now, just name the chapter and click “Create Chapter”
Once you add the chapter, you’ll now see it added to the module
Adding Lessons
To add a new lesson, click the “Add New Content” button, and choose “Add Lesson”
You’ll now be able to choose a template to create your lesson with.
Once you choose the template, there are a number of settings.
- Lesson Title
- Lesson Summary
- Enable Preview
- Lesson Duration
- Lesson URL/Slug
- The Module and Chapter the lesson belongs to
- Lesson Placeholder Image
Once you have those options setup, then you can click “Create Lesson” at the bottom of the settings overlay. Here are a few images to show you the full options available.
Once you click the Create Lesson button, you’ll see it in the Course Content area:
Special Design Tip
After you create your first Module and Lessons, our suggestion is to get the styling and design the way you want before proceeding. Then, all you would have to do is simply clone your modules and just change the name and content of the lessons in the cloned module.
This will allow you to quickly create the rest of your course without worrying about the design and styling aspects, and will help you avoid having to edit each one individually should you decide to make changes later.
We are working on a new way to do this where you would be able to create a layout for your modules and lessons but this will hopefully come out soon (sometime in 2024). We’ll update this guide when that time comes.
Publishing your Course Content
When you create your course, the Course Homepage is published by default. You’ll need to publish your Module and Lesson pages. Chapters are not really pages so they don’t have an option for this since they are just there and already built into the system. It’s very easy to publish modules and lessons.
Step 1: Just click the gray “Draft” button
Step 2: You’ll see they have now been published
Edit Existing Course Content
Each module and lesson, and even the course homepage all have options to either Edit Details or Edit Page. Here is the difference.
Edit Details – this is where you can edit the name, summary, slug, etc. that you initially selected when creating the content.
Edit Page – This actually is what you use to launch the OptimizeBuilder editor for the content.
Preview Content
To preview the content, just click the little “eye” icon
How to Clone Your Modules & Lessons
If you clone a Module it will also carry the Chapters and Lessons with it. Just click the clone icon.
Then you’ll be able to name the new Module
Click the blue “Duplicate” button (image above) and the Module will be duplicated as you can see below. The content will be in Draft status so you can make changes before publishing.
Deleting Content
To delete content, just click the trash icon and follow the directions after you do so if you really want to delete it.
If you delete a module or chapter, you will need to determine where the lessons are going to go, or if you want to delete those also.
We hope this guide was very helpful. If you should need further help with anything else please get in touch with the support team or search our knowledgebase.