Great news! We just released a stable version of Guru 5, our Joomla LMS! After one beta version and 3 RC's, we feel that it's finally ready for prime time. A big thank you for those who submitted bug reports!

So what's new in Guru 5?

A couple of weeks ago we told you about the Guru 5 Beta 1 release. The response and the feedback have been fantastic… and best of all, very few of them were about bugs! You can read about Guru 5’s new features here and about the Guru 5 Beta 1 release here.

I am happy to announce the release of our highly anticipated Guru 5 Beta 1. This version has all the exciting new features and the complete redesign I mentioned in my last blog post. It is the ultimate Joomla LMS!

Guru 5, our Joomla LMS,  is right around the corner. You’re going to love it! We know you’ve been waiting a while for this release but when you see what we’ve packed in, you’ll wonder how we managed to do it all so fast. (Late nights and lots of coffee mostly.) This is a sneak peek at what you can expect to see. The plan is to release Guru 5 in early April. When it comes out, I’ll talk you through the details.

Hi Gurus!

Good news! We’ve just released a new version of Guru for Joomla 2.5 with a new feature: Free Courses.

Once you've finished creating or editing a course, you can set the price to "free" – and you can even choose who gets to enjoy the gift.

That makes free courses a great way to reward current customers and tempt targeted leads.

Whatever kind of courses you’re selling, there’s a good chance you’ll need screen capture software. You’ll need to show students what’s on your monitor and which buttons they need to press. My favorite program is Camtasia Studio.

Camtasia has the right tools for creating professional screen videos and doesn’t require any complex training.  With Camtasia, you can easily generate effective videos that help you train, teach, sell, and more.

I’m a big fan of Vimeo. The site is my favorite choice for video hosting. Today, I will explain how to keep your videos private so that no one can download them or find them on other websites. If they want to see your content, they’ll have to buy your course. It’s an essential step when you’re selling video courses online.

Recently, I created a new learning center for LookBetterOnline with Guru. The setup was simple but when I came to test it, I ran into a problem. Once I’d made my payment, I wasn’t taken automatically back to the "My Courses" page and my order was not recorded as "paid." It turned out that my PayPal settings for this account were wrong. If this has happened to you as well, here’s the solution:

You have to change two settings in PayPal for Guru to work properly after your customers have made a payment.

When discussing the benefits of the Learning Management System (LMS), the idea that it helps learning online or creating an environment more conducive for learning gets thrown around a lot. But efficient learning can mean so many things to different people, so it’s better to know exactly which aspects of the online learning system LMS will have an impact on.

As far as Learning Management Systems (LMS) are concerned, there are two groups of people: those that look at LMS as a tool to help their organization and those that see LMS as a preferred strategy to achieving certain goals. There’s no doubt that both are valid views.

If you’re new to Learning Management Systems (LMS), then you’ve probably just learned that they help promote learning. Of course, different competing LMS providers will have their own set of unique features, but they’re all bound to help solve the most common issues that traditional learning systems often have problems overcoming.

One way to tell a better Learning Management System (LMS) over all others is its ability to facilitate different lessons in different ways. Here are a couple of things you can look for when choosing the right LMS tool for your website:

There are three basic ways you can put up or share media files to complement the lessons you’re catering to with your Learning Management System (LMS). These are: