If you are creating a pay-to-learn website, you have no doubt looked at the various web-based open-source LMS (Learning Management Systems) or sometimes called CMS (Course Management Systems). These programs were designed by educators, not marketers, so they don't contain the payment solutions that marketers want to cash in on the 'Boom' in pay-to-learn web sites.

You need the flexibility of the LMS, but you also want:

* A professional-looking cart and checkout system

* The ability to use any payment processor - not just PayPal

* A pro-grade affiliate management system

* Ability to track payments

* A system that integrates with popular 3rd party systems such as autoresponders

* Professional design and a reliable system

The sad fact is, that the open-source LMS products today just do not have robust ecommerce support. It is possible to add a shopping cart to an open-source LMS product like Moodle. With a little set of hacks and the E-Junkie shopping cart system, it's really quite easy to do, even if you have basic to moderate coding skills. Moodle is a good choice because it is so modular.

So what is Moodle? Moodle is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. Its open source license and modular design means that people can develop additional functionality. Development is undertaken by a globally diffused network of commercial and non-commercial users, streamlined by the Moodle company based in Perth, Western Australia.

Moodle has many features expected from an e-learning platform, plus some original innovations (e.g. its filtering system).

Moodle is modular in construction and can readily be extended by creating plugins for specific new functionality. Moodle's infrastructure supports many types of plugin:

* Activities

* Resource types

* Question types

* Data field types (for the database activity)

* Graphical themes

* Authentication methods

* Enrollment methods

* Content Filters

The stated philosophy of Moodle includes a constructivist and social constructionist approach to education, emphasizing that learners (and not just teachers) can contribute to the educational experience in many ways. Moodle's features reflect this in various design aspects, such as making it possible for students to comment on entries in a database (or even to contribute entries themselves), or to work collaboratively in a wiki.

Having said this, Moodle is flexible enough to allow for a full range of modes of teaching. It can be used for both introductory and advanced delivery of content (e.g. HTML pages) or assessment, and does not necessitate a constructivist teaching approach.

Constructivism is sometimes seen as at odds with accountability-focused ideas about education, such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in the United States. Accountability stresses tested outcomes, not teaching techniques, or pedagogy, but Moodle is also useful in an outcomes-oriented classroom environment because of its flexibility.

The word Moodle is actually an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, although originally the M stood for "Martin", named after Martin Dougiamas, the original developer.

Moodle can also be considered a verb, which describes the improvisational process of doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course.

Many third-party Moodle plugins are freely available making use of this infrastructure.

PHP can be used to author and contribute new modules. Moodle's development has been assisted by the work of open source programmers. This has contributed towards its rapid development and rapid bug fixes.

They key to doing ecommerce in Moodle is by using the remote enrollment database feature. You 'intercept' the enrollment code within Moodle, and replace it with your shopping cart buttons. Then the remote callback feature of the EJunkie shopping cart populates your external enrollment database.

Adding ecommerce to Moodle and other open source LMS' can be done- it just takes a little ingenuity and some great features from the EJunkie Shopping cart.