[Alison Bell-Roberts]

Hi everyone

I joined LAB over the weekend, so I wanted to introduce myself. Not sure if this is the right place to do that, but here goes.

I’ve been blogging for about 2 – 3 years, not very successfully. I write about Confidence for professional women, based on my experience of HR Management, training and coaching. My biggest challenge has been the technical side and getting the momentum I need to drive the business forward.

I relaunched my blog in August, so feel like I’m right at the beginning again.

I live in the UK, 45 miles west of London with my long-suffering husband of 26 years and 3 dogs.

I’m looking forward to learning from you all, and offering any support I can give.

Thanks for reading

[David Risley]

Welcome, Allison. 🙂

So, is there anything right out the gate here on the tech side of things that I can help you with?

[Alison Bell-Roberts]

Hi David

Wow, you are right off the bat.

I’m currently looking at an LMS, and I’ve had a look at a few. Podia looks good, but I read your article on LearnDash and had a quick look. I liked what I saw.

This will be my first attempt at building a course – would you recommend LearnDash to a newbie? I’m expecting a big learning curve and I’m fine with that, I just don’t want something that is overly technical.

If I go with LearnDash is it advisable to host it on a subdomain of my website rather than on the main domain? I’m thinking of site speed being an issue.

Also, I wonder if you have a recommendation for voiceover. I’m intending to make my first course with presentation slides and voiceover (I will move to video teaching at a later date).

And, (sorry this is sounding like a shopping list) what hardware would you recommend – by this I mean recording equipment, mic etc.

Thanks David

[David Risley]

I would definitely recommend LearnDash over Podia, if for no other reason that Podia is a hosted service that will cost you quite a bit more money. Podia is kind of an “all in one”, which is fine, but proprietary and so you will not have total flexibility with it, either.

Generally, I’m a fan of hosting your membership site on a sub-domain rather than your main marketing blog.

As for recording videos, what kind of computer do you have? I use Screenflow, but that’s Mac only. For Windows, Camtasia is supposed to be good, but I had issues with it and ended up getting a refund. A lot of people will record their screen using free software like OBS Open Broadcast Software). Technically, that’s for live video feeds, but it can record your screen quite well.

You don’t need super fancy equipment. Just a decent USB mic will work fine. A lot of people like the Yeti mics.

[Alison Bell-Roberts]

Thanks for this insight David – really appreciate your guidance. I’ve been advised that LearnDash requires a super-fast website and is quite challenging to set up. I have limited tech know-how so wonder if this would be a good fit for me.

A friend of mine is going with Thinkific – back to the hosting issue and it is quite expensive – any thoughts?

BTW I invested in ConvertBox and I’m going through your training which is excellent – thanks for making that available.

[David Risley]

FWIW, I don’t think LearnDash is difficult to set up at all. It is pretty plug-and-play, really. Unless you needed to tweak the way it works or something. And, as for the hosting requirements for it, it’s nothing special. Not sure who told you that.

[Alison Bell-Roberts]

Thanks, David – that’s reassuring. I’m going to go ahead with LearnDash 🙂