Ever wished you could create a seamless space where your students could access everything they need—assignments, grades, and course materials—all in one place?
A student portal does just that! And you don’t have to be among the top-league universities to have one.
Even a local school or tutoring platform can create such a student information system with minimum time and effort.
So, let’s dive right in.
What Constitutes a Student Portal, Anyway?
Each student portal is designed and built to fit an institution’s specific needs. However, here are some fundamental features that are essential regardless of the implementation:
- Registration and Enrollment: What’s a student portal without students? They should be able to register themselves, and instructors should be able to add them to their classes.
- User Profile: A student portal should have distinguished profiles for both students and instructors, highlighting their academic records, qualifications, and achievements.
- Communication: Students should be able to connect with their faculty, administration, and fellow peers from within the portal.
- Academic Resource: A portal should give students easy access to educational resources. This could be recorded lessons, ebooks, PDFs, or even presentations.
- Analytics and Reporting: Insights from a student portal can help institutions learn about eLearning trends and student behaviors.
- Security and Compliance: Finally, a portal should have measures in place to safeguard the data of users and the institution. It should also comply with local policies and regulations.
Build a Student Portal in 5 Easy Steps
Now, there are a couple of approaches you can take with your student portal.
- The first is the hardcoded route, which is often long and involves coding the portal from scratch. It’s challenging and thus requires a team. It can get too costly.
- The most viable solution for most would be to leverage the existing learning management system (LMS) platforms.
For this tutorial, we will use the Masteriyo LMS plugin on WordPress. This combination will allow us to create a student portal in a quick and cost-efficient manner.
Alternatively, you can opt for pre-made SaaS LMS like Teachable and Thinkific. However, they come with limitations in terms of features and customization. They also tend to cost more in the long run.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Step 1: Get a Domain and Hosting
To make your portal live, you need domain and hosting. The domain is the name or address to which your site will be accessed. Hosting is the server resource where your site is stored.
Most likely, your institution already has a website. In that case, you don’t need to get one separately. You can simply create a sub-domain to host the portal.
Hosting a student portal on a sub-domain is a widely used strategy. For example:
- Walden University hosts its myWalden Student Portal on my.walden.edu, a sub-domain of walden.edu.
- Grand Canyon University hosts its GCU Portal on gcuportal.gcu.edu, a sub-domain of gcu.edu.
- Western Governors University hosts its student portal on student-portal-mfe.wgu.edu, a sub-domain of wgu.edu.
Step 2: Install WordPress
The next step is to install WordPress on your website.
Most hosting providers these days provide one-click WordPress installation on most packages. You can consult their documentation or contact their support team for further assistance.
Alternatively, you can install WordPress using FTP and File Manager. This is a more complex process, and we recommend consulting an expert.
Step 3: Install and Configure LMS Plugin
Now that you have an active WordPress installation, it’s time to install an LMS plugin.
As discussed earlier, we are going with Masteriyo LMS, which will form the core of the student portal.
Download Masteriyo from WordPress.org
You can download it for free from the WordPress.org plugin depository by following the given steps:
- Login into your WordPress dashboard.
- Go to Plugins >> Add new Plugin.
- Search for “Masteriyo LMS” on the top search bar.
- Install and activate Masteriyo from the search result.
Masteriyo also has a Pro version if you want all its premium features. You can enjoy 50% off the first year if you purchase it from here.
It will give you access to the zip of the Masteriyo Pro plugin accompanied by a license. Install the zip file using the Upload Plugin option on the Add Plugins page.
Complete the Setup Wizard
Upon successful activation, you will be directed to the Setup Wizard. Or you can initiate it some other time from Masteriyo >> Tools >> Setup Wizard.
- General: Enable or disable student and instructor registrations based on your preference and other basic features.
- Course: Decide the layout of the course page. Manage how courses appear in the listing.
- Business Type: Unless you want to make money off the portal, select the Individual option.
- Checkout: In case you want to offer premium resources, select the primary currency here.
- Sample Courses: Masteriyo provides three demo courses by default. You can publish or leave them on draft here.
Congratulations! You have successfully created a basic education portal for your students and instructors.
Step 4: Setup User Roles and Access
The next step is to add learners and students to your portals. You can do this in multiple ways.
If you have enabled the option from the setup wizard, users can register themselves from the portal itself.
Students can register from the Account page. There is also a dedicated Instructor Registration page.
In addition, you can add users individually from Masteriyo >> Users >> Add new Users.
Moreover, if you have a huge list of users, you can add them at once by using the Import option from Masteriyo >> Tools >> Import/Export >> Users.
You will need a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file with details of all your users, including the following details:
- ID: Think of it as a unique identifier serial number.
- User Name: This can not be changed later.
- Email: Users can use this email to log in instead of using their username.
- Roles: This could be either masteriyo_instructor or masteriyo_student.
To add a new administrator, head over to the User section from your WordPress admin dashboard.
Select Add New User and add in the required details. Make sure to change the role from “Subscriber” (default) to “Administrator.”
Pro Tip: You can also add Masteriyo Student and Masteriyo Instructor from here.
Step 5: Add Courses and Content
Finally, it’s time to upload content to your student portal. Start by adding some courses, quizzes, and assignments.
Then, you can experiment with some more advanced features. We suggest using the following Masteriyo features for your student portal:
- Gradebook: Create a custom grading system to evaluate and track the progress of students.
- Certificate Builder: This lets you create certificates that are sent to learners upon completion of the course.
- Live Stream: This lets instructors schedule live classes to interact with students.
- Course Content Protection: Protects video lessons and other academic resources against unauthorized downloads.
- Login Session Management: This lets users manage their active session over multiple devices.
- Content Drip: This lets the instructors take full control of content delivery by scheduling content in chunks.
Check out Masteriyo’s complete feature set here.
Moreover, you can also integrate Masteriyo with other services for more utilities:
- Open AI Chat: Get things done quicker with ChatGPT integration.
- GamiPress: Make learning fun by integrating gamification into your portal.
- Google Classroom: Merge your student portal with your Google Classroom.
Check out all possible integrations here.
Wrapping Up: Create a Student Portal Using WordPress
Just like that, we’ve come to the end of this tutorial.
Please leave a comment down below if you get lost during the process, we’ll be happy to help.
Otherwise, give yourself a pat on the back since you’ve just created a functional student portal.
This portal will help you organize teaching materials, engage students, and make their learning journey more fun.