Implementation of an API integration, CourseBoard and Learnmatch

The course database

If you want to publish a course database on your domain based on Springest data there are two options with which you can achieve this:

  1. Building your own database based with an API integration or our RSS feed (in this article we will take the example of the API integration)
  2. Implementing a whitelabel CourseBoard

These  approaches differ in terms of implementation efforts and benefits. Basically the choice is: if you want to create unique high quality content to also attract more visitors from SEO and create all course content exactly in your own look and feel, you should build your own database based on our API. If you want to launch quickly with a low implementation effort, you should choose the CourseBoard.

A. Implementing an API integration

To build your own educational database basically the following steps need to be taken:

1. Choose relevant categories & subjects

Springest is built from a total of 21 categories and more than 1000 subjects per country. Not all of these subjects will be relevant for your domain and building a base of 1000 subjects takes quite some effort. So firstly you need to choose which subjects you want to publish.

2. Template Development

  • category template "courses and education” 

You will need to create a template for your "courses and education” category. This is an example of one of our media partners "Intermediair".

  • Course subject page template 

You will need to create a template for the course subject pages, that will contain a API feed reader / display script, which will retrieve the subject courses from the Springest API and display on the subject pages. These subject pages are the main "SEO real estate" of your course database, which will rank in Google and attract more visitors, when correctly developed. You can find more information about this in the article  How to create unique content based on the Springest API.

You will also need to customise and implement the API script to display the courses, here you can find some  API example scripts on Github.

  • Individual course page template 

You will need to create a template to display the individual courses on your domain. Important details to think about are how you will display the course content, which metadata do you want to show, such as reviews.

3. Building the database

  • category "courses and education”

    The categorypage should show the course subjects which you want to highlight to your vistors. You will need to group the subcategories like "Management" or "Personal development". 
  • subject pages

    As mentioned before this should be your main equity, where you preferably add some SEO content regarding the specific course subject. You will also need to choose the specific subjects from which you will display the courses. In the Springest developer documentation you can find how to create such an  API call for courses (training). If you want to show more than 1 page of results for a specific subject, you will need to consider using pagination. You can find more about that in the Introduction to the Springest API. 

Here you can find all our API documentation.

The implementation effort will depend on the complexity of your templates and the amount of course subjects you will publish.

B. Implementing a Whitelabel CourseBoard

Implementing a CourseBoard is much easier, so from an implementation perspective, this is the best option. Since the CourseBoard is built on the Springest Framework it can contain the full Springest course database, or a selection of your preference. Since this is in fact a "mini" Springest, the content is duplicate, so you will not rank as well in Google with this content compared to the API integration. 

The CourseBoard will be delivered matching your corporate identity and the main steps you need to take are:

  • Host the CourseBoard on a subdomain like courses.yourdomain.com using CNAME
  • Link to the CourseBoard from your main navigation to ensure proper indexing of the content

Example implementation:

Learnmatch

Learnmatch is Springest's API endpoint that matches courses with jobtitle's and/or skills. You can integrate the API like in the screenshot below, or you can use our Javascript Widget.

Implementing the Learnmatch widget is very time-efficient. The Learnmatch widget dynamically loads Learnmatch content on your page via JavaScript. You can find  the Learnmatch documentation here (including widget setup guide). Implementing the widget and customising it to your own design shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.

Connecting the Learnmatch results with your own Course database. 

The Learnmatch widget is connected with the Springest core database, so the results link to the public Springest domain. But we made it possible to have your visitors click through to your own course database. 

A. Connecting with your API integration 

With our URL overwrite script you can modify the standard URL output to the matching URL from your own database. There are some essential points to achieve this:

  • The training_id is used in your URL structure for training (course) pages.
  • You need to retrieve the training pages based on live data
  • Your URL structure should always have the same format

http://www.intermediair.nl/testen-tools/opleidingen/training/praktisch-leidinggeven/11009

B. Connecting with your CourseBoard

Your CourseBoard wil have its own API, so Learnmatch can be connected with this API.

Whichever approach you choose, setting up a Learnmatch widget and connecting the results with your own training pages will take between 4 to 8 hours.