The AccessAlly User Guide

The first step in your membership site/online course setup is the WordPress site itself. The quality of this foundation will determine how well your site can grow and expand with your business.

Note:
Designing a website requires an entirely separate skillset, and can cause frustrations and confusion unrelated to the functionality of your courses. 

While you should install your WordPress theme in this step, we highly recommend NOT implementing page-specific designs until the appropriate step (indicated further down the list). 

Ideally, you should already have your course content planned, prepared, and ready to go before you invest in the tools needed to implement it. Content creation is typically the longest stage of any website, membership, or online course build. Leave ample time for content revisions when planning your launch date.

In this stage, you'll install the AccessAlly plugin on your WordPress website.

AccessAlly’s Setup Wizard provides an easy-to-follow, 3-step process that activates your plugin license, integrates with your CRM, and integrates with your payment processor (Stripe and/or PayPal).

As a bonus, the Setup Wizard will also create your key pages and make sure they’re properly designated so that your basic site redirects will work properly.

Review the Setup Wizard tutorial here.

Note: You may wish to use a different payment processor instead of working with AccessAlly's order forms. If you opt for an alternative system, PLEASE BE CERTAIN THAT IT INTEGRATES WITH YOUR CRM. The integration must be able to create users and issue tags in the CRM itself if you want it to work with your AccessAlly membership site. We do not provide support for alternative options.

If you're moving to AccessAlly from another plugin or hosted platform, you'll want to take advantage of our "Migration Wizard".

Even though it's called the Course Creation Wizard, this area is not limited to online course formats.

Since the Wizard takes care of creating the pages, permission tags, and even products, you can use it for:

• Online Courses
• Affiliate systems
• Membership groups
• etc.

Please know ahead of time what you wish to include in the following areas:

Keep Track of Tags Using the Course Map PDF

The Course Wizard will auto-create the permission (and revoke) tags that will be used in your CRM automations. Many course creators find it helpful to have a physical record of their tags as well, by printing out our Course Map PDF and keeping it handy.

The Checklist
At the end of the Course Wizard, you'll come to a checklist. Please keep this checklist handy, as it will also guide you through the next few stages of setup.

In the previous stage, you created the structure of your online course (or other membership areas). Now, it's time to add the content to these pages.

Using AccessAlly Pro? Once your pages are published, it's time to configure the LMS features:

AFTER you have your content mapped out and created, it's time to implement the design (look & feel) of your website via the WordPress theme.

Please consult your developer for the best way to approach this process, and feel free to peruse through our design resources below:

Design Resources:

• Guide to Membership Website Design
• Get out free theme templates here
• Create your own theme layouts or import ready-made ones - Tutorial
  AccessAlly includes templates for Elementor and Beaver Builder, and Divi Themes.
• Plan your course look and feel - Tutorial
• Decide on a design for your course icons - Download our Icon Templates

Not sure what theme to use? We currently recommend both Elementor and Beaver Builder (for its flexibility and stability), and have a suite of free templates that you can use on your AccessAlly site.

 

In this stage, you will set up the order forms (if you're selling paid courses), or opt-in forms (if you're creating free courses).

I am making a free course:

Follow the tutorial here to offer a free course to your students - Tutorial

I want to sell courses individually:

• Step 1: Create a Product (AccessAlly can auto-create this inside the Course Wizard) - Tutorial
• Step 2: Create Your Order Form Offers - Tutorial
• Step 3: Create your order page, using the shortcode
• Optional: To customize the appearance of your order forms, you can follow these steps - Tutorial

I want to sell membership subscriptions to give people access to my courses:

• Step 1: Create a Product - Tutorial
• Step 2: Create Your Order Form Offers - Tutorial
• Step 3: Create your order page, using the shortcode
• Optional: To customize the appearance of your order forms, you can follow these steps - Tutorial
• Want to offer a payment plan or subscriptions? Check out this tutorial - Tutorial

In this stage, you'll create all of the automations required for your membership site. Please note that every action you wish to be automated MUST be specified inside your CRM.

If you have two courses that you want to release automatically when a user purchases access, for example, you must create two separate automations inside your CRM.

Although we have a wide variety of tutorials to help you set up your courses, please know that you must be familiar with your CRM to set it up properly. If a single step is configured improperly inside your CRM automation, the two systems cannot communicate properly.

Before you begin, please read this tutorial for more information: Your Guide To Creating CRM Automations

Looking for pre-built automations? We currently have free automation templates available for:

• Ontraport
• ActiveCampaign
• ConvertKit

Stage 8 Checklist: