LMScast

Hosted by Chris Badgett

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Episodes

500

Latest episode

Jun 2026

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About the show

LMScast is a podcast for innovators like you in the WordPress LMS e-learning community. LMScast is produced by Chris Badgett, part of the team behind the #1 WordPress LMS plugin called LifterLMS. Each episode brings you valuable insights with one goal: to help you generate more income and impact through a learning management system built on WordPress. LMScast is for you the entrepreneur, the teacher, the expert, or the online marketer.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

June 14, 202646 min

555: How To Do Advanced Assessments From Your WordPress LMS With PressPrimer By Ryan Moore

Ryan Moore, the founder of PressPrimer and a previous leader at Uncanny Owl, discusses evaluation, one of the most important but often disregarded facets of online learning, in this LMScast episode. Ryan contends that whether or whether students really learn, remember, and apply the material being taught is the fundamental test of a successful learning program, despite the fact that many LMS conversations center on course development, marketing, and student registration. By offering sophisticated assessment tools that concentrate on gauging learning outcomes, student performance, and information retention, Press Primer was developed to assist instructors in going beyond simple quizzes and completion monitoring. Instead of attempting to become another all-in-one LMS platform, Ryan continues, Press Primer adopts a specific approach to evaluation. Specifically, the solution focuses on making WordPress quizzes and assignments better.

June 7, 202648 min

554: What Is Really Going On_ Chris And Emily Debate Current Reality

Chris Badgett and Emily Middleton from WPCourseGuide examine the quickly changing effects of artificial intelligence on online learning, course design, WordPress, entrepreneurship, and the nature of employment in this episode of LMScast. They talk about how AI is enabling creators to develop courses, produce content, build software prototypes, and automate complex tasks more quickly than ever before. Chris provides real-world examples of utilizing AI to produce comprehensive product specifications and functional software prototypes in a matter of minutes, while Emily discusses how course designers may utilize AI tools to develop course structures, lesson content, and learning materials. They stress that while AI makes it easier to create, it also increases the bar for quality, making knowledge, originality, and well-considered user experiences more crucial than before.

May 31, 202638 min

553: Your Course Site Is Half-Built Without WP Fusion

Chris Badgett argues in this LMScast episode why LMS and CRM should be handled as a single, integrated system rather than as distinct tools by any professional online learning company. He highlights that whereas CRM technologies handle marketing, automation, and customer connections, platforms like LifterLMS handle the learning process. WP Fusion, which serves as the connection layer that synchronizes student activity with marketing platforms and enables sophisticated automation across WordPress-based educational websites, is the missing component between them.

May 24, 202637 min

552: The Business of WordPress LMS Hosting with WP Tonic Founder Jonathan Denwood

In this LMScast episode, Jonathan Denwood talks about how WP-Tonic makes it easier for instructors, coaches, owners of membership sites, and educational institutions to create robust WordPress-based learning management systems without having to deal with complex technical settings. He clarifies that WP-Tonic is a comprehensive solution that includes managed hosting, premium plugins, CRM tools, email marketing systems, templates, support, and website development services. Jonathan emphasizes that their hosting packages include with useful technologies like LifterLMS, FluentCRM, WP Fusion, and other automation and performance tools, which help customers save money and avoid the hassle of handling numerous subscriptions and integrations on their own.

May 18, 202642 min

551: How To Increase Course Sales and Learner Results With Smart Popups

In this LMScast episode, Chris Badgett discusses how clever popups may be effective tools for increasing course sales. Also, learner success on an LMS website. Chris illustrates why popups should assist, support, and customize the student experience rather than just interrupting users for marketing goals by using Popup Maker in conjunction with LifterLMS. He investigates tactics including employing targeted upsells or cross-sells following course completion, providing discounts or lead magnets to reluctant customers, and recovering abandoned carts with exit-intent popups.Chris places a strong emphasis on student engagement in addition to sales, demonstrating how popups may greet new students, promote community involvement, assist students in picking up where they left off, or offer extra assistance when students seem to be having trouble with a subject.

May 10, 202646 min

550: How to Use an Affiliate Program to Create a Content Marketing Engine (1)

According to Alex Standiford from Siren Affiliate, affiliate programs should be much more than just discount systems or referral links in the modern era. According to him, companies particularly those that provide courses and software should consider themselves to be media and education enterprises that require ongoing content, collaborations, and audience trust in order to expand. Alex advises locating niche specialists, bloggers, podcasters, influencers, and producers who already cater to your desired audience and offering them incentives to produce worthwhile material about your product or sector rather than attempting to produce all of the content yourself. He refers to these individuals as "multipliers" since they help you reach audiences that you would not be able to reach on your own. Additionally, he stresses that consumers start their trip long before they are prepared to make a purchase, so companies should provide content for earlier phases of the customer journey rather than just product-focused searches.

May 3, 202641 min

549: The Claude Playbook Smart Course Creators Are Already Running

In this episode, Chris Badgett provides a thorough guide on how contemporary course designers are use Claude to greatly expedite and enhance the process of creating and marketing online courses.He says he switched to Claude because it is better at handling long-form content, retains more context, and generates more dependable, less "hallucinated" outputs all of which are particularly helpful when working on big projects like entire books, courses, or sales pages. In addition to the chat interface, he breaks down the larger Claude ecosystem, which includes tools like Projects for work organization, Claude Design for making slides, visuals, and even interactive lessons, and Cowork/agents that can connect with tools like Google Drive, email, or analytics to automate workflows and produce insights. He emphasizes useful applications for course designers, such converting student support letters into new lesson ideas, translating courses for international audiences, developing sales pages and email sequences, summarizing and making FAQs, and building quizzes from lesson content.

April 24, 202647 min

Why Most Membership Sites Fail

Most membership sites collapse under their own complexity. In this solo LMScast episode, Chris Badgett breaks down the three-part alignment model that keeps the winners standing: business model, pricing, and offer stack. You will learn four core subscription models, three alternative ones, and how to price with good, better, best tiers instead of guessing. Real examples from Funk Roberts, Ziv Raviv, Tim McIvor, and SaaS pricing legend Patrick Campbell. If you run (or are about to launch) a membership site on LifterLMS or any WordPress LMS, this is your gut check.

April 19, 202650 min

12 Years of Building LifterLMS , 7 Things I Got Wrong

In this LMScast episode, Chris Badgett takes a deep and honest look back at more than 12 years of creating LifterLMS, detailing seven big blunders that molded both the product and his evolution as an entrepreneur. He starts out by discussing content and SEO, stating that one of his first regrets was not learning how to write effectively for search engines earlier. Even while the team regularly produced blogs, videos, and podcasts, he subsequently came to the conclusion that they might have had a greater early edge in search visibility especially in the cutthroat WordPress ecosystem, had they produced more strategic, technically optimized textual material. He then discusses supplementary aspects that are under-marketed. Although LifterLMS is well-known for its ability to create courses, he notes that many users were unaware of the full potential of the platform since significant features like memberships, social learning, and coaching tools were not adequately articulated.

April 12, 202635 min

546: From Course Creator to Media Company The Only Way to Win Now

In this episode of LMScast, Chris Badgett offers an important perspective change for anybody making online courses: you should conceive of yourself as a media firm rather than merely a course designer. He says that since systems like ChatGPT and Claude can rapidly give answers and learning resources, knowledge is no longer scarce in today's environment. Because of this, merely packing content into a course is no longer sufficient to succeed or stand out. Instead, people's attention and trust have become limited, particularly in a digital world that is overrun with content, short videos, and subpar AI-generated content. This makes it more difficult for instructors to keep students' interest long enough for them to finish courses, which are inherently lengthy and need dedication.