How To Install LearnDash On WordPress [Guide]

Thinking about producing a digital learning course page? You may want to consider using LearnDash. 

LearnDash is an LMS (Learning Management System) plugin that you can install in WordPress. The system gives you a way to create, publish, and market your digital courses, no matter what they’re about.

You’ll learn more about the LearnDash website in this post, including its primary features and how to install LearnDash on WordPress site. You’ll also learn how to create and sell the courses that you make.

More About LearnDash

LearnDash is a premium Learning Management System plugin that’s designed to be compatible with WordPress. It works with all multi-sites and WordPress themes, while its many tools can help you create flexible courses in several styles.

This makes sure that the courses you make are bold, captivating, and most of all, fun.

LearnDash is ideal for those that want to transform a website into an LMS. Examples include businesses that aim to train their employees, WordPress developers creating digital courses for their clients, or educational establishments. 

LearnDash Main Features

Here are some of learndash’s primary features and what they do:

Producing Courses

LearnDash lets you produce endless several courses. Every course prerequisites have several options to choose from, allowing you to create courses that are comprised of different learning styles and tasks. 

You can produce multilevel courses, split education into an assortment of topics and lessons, and use different forms of media, like audio and video. You can also include grading books, class timers, forums, and quizzes to generate interest in each course. 

There’s also the option to provide content on a drip feed basis, according to a planned schedule, as well as give certificates for those that finish a course.

Selling Content

LearnDash also makes it simple and easy to sell courses. You can use the WordPress LMS plugin to select a charge for every lesson, choose a payment timetable, and sell straight from your own site. 

The plugin also lets you add a shopping cart on your WordPress website and select a variety of payment portals. You can choose to charge a one-time payment for buying a course or choose to go for a repeated subscription, sell online courses in a package, or produce membership plans. 

Handling Admin

LearnDash gives you complete control over your students and lessons, making sure that handling the admin of the Learning Management System is as simple as can be. 

The plugin lets students form a digital profile to follow their own education path as they learn. You also can send automated emails to improve user engagement, put people in groups, and let other users supervise them.

Installing Extensions

Other than the main capabilities that LearnDash offers, it also lets you install additional extensions to add updated features to the system. LearnFash offers several premium, third-party, and free add-ons, like BuddyPress, MemberPress, and WooCommerce.

LearnDash has several features that make it a useful system. Next, we’ll go over how to use the plugin to produce general courses, so you can begin your eLearning experience.

How To Install Learn Dash

Now that you know more about LearnDash, you can follow our guide to install it in WordPress!

Technical Necessities

Before you can start installing the plugin, make sure that your host meets the following advised necessities:

• PHP memory limit over 128 MB
• HTTPS support
• MariaDB version 10.1 and up OR MySQL version 5.6 and up
• PHP version 7.4 and up

You can contact your hosting provider or ask your developer if they meet these conditions.

Installing LearnDash

Now you can follow these steps to install the plugin. 

• Find the Plugins tab and select Add New.
• Select Upload Plugin.
• Locate the .zip file that was downloaded after buying the plugin, then select it.
• Press Install Now.
• Press Activate Plugin.

Activating License

After you’ve finished installing the plugin, you’ll need to activate your license. 

Follow these steps to do so:

• Enter the email that was used to buy LearnDash
• Fill in the license information which was included in the email you received after you bought the plugin.

After you’ve finished filling out the information, press Validate to see if the data you entered was legitimate. If this is the case, you should view a green prompt that displays “Your license is valid.’’

If you don’t have your license information, you can acquire the details by pressing the link to log into your LearnDash account.

Course Structures

Once you’ve activated your license, the OnBoarding Wizard will take you to a page where you can establish your courses.

This involves choosing the number of multiple courses you’re planning on creating. You can choose ‘Multiple’ or ‘Just One’. This will let the wizard establish your course access settings and listing as required.

Now you’ll need to choose the following features which apply to your planned LearnDash courses. These are:

• Simple: text course with no quizzes or certificates
• Certificate: text or video course with quizzes and certificates
• Timed: timed text or video course with certificates and quizzes
• Group courses: led by group leaders, ideal for classrooms and corporate training

If you choose group courses, you’ll be prompted to answer the following questions:

• Are your groups private or public?
• Who is going to lead the group courses?

The Onboarding Wizard will establish the group settings for you after you answer the questions above.

Choosing the suitable course varieties from the choices above will help the wizard establish what add-ons or plugins would be best for you. 

You’ll then press Next to move on to the payment step. 

Payment

This step involves choosing whether you will or won’t set a charge for your courses. If you do want to charge, this step will help you establish these payments.

If you choose Yes, you will notice two choices: WooCommerce or Stripe.

Stripe Connect is integrated into LearnDash 4.0, so you won’t have to install a different add-on. If you want users to pay for your courses with a credit card, Stripe will be the simpler choice.

Press Connect to link your LearnDash site and Stripe account. If you haven’t got a Stripe account, you can make a new one by pressing the button. 

WooCommerce may be the better option if you want to personalize your payment system, have free trials, or have subscriptions. Choose WooCommerce if this is the case, then the Onboarding Wizard will set up the required plugins for you. 

LearnDash is also compatible with other payment options, like PayPal. If you want to use these, skip this step and establish these settings later on.

After you’ve chosen the payment system you’d prefer to use, select the currency you want to accept on the pull-down menu.

Click on Next to move on to the following step. 

Summary

The last step the Wizard will move onto is the summary. You’ll see a page that displays all of the actions you have chosen with the wizard.

Things like registration, registration success, installing add-ons, and resetting listings and settings will have been completed after you’ve finished the setup.

If you chose and permitted the Group settings, you will also have the choice of personalizing and establishing these by pressing the ‘+’ button. You can select and deselect the ones which you want to use. 

Press Save and Complete to finish and close the Onboarding Wizard. This will apply all of your chosen settings and install any plugins that you require. 

Remember that you can update and change any preferences and settings later on. You’ll have to go into the individual settings on your WordPress Dashboard to do this. 

LearnDash Settings

After you’ve finished registering and installing the LearnDash plugin, it’s a good idea to navigate to the Settings tab. 

This is the control area of LearnDash. You can set up everything in this area, from your website logo to payment settings. You can also change your website’s colors here. 

Make sure that you have a look at the Custom Labels tab. Everybody phrases things in different ways, so the Custom Labels area lets you change how the features of your course are explained. 

For instance, the initial label for Courses is simply ‘Courses’. You may want to change this to a word you prefer, like Lectures. 

Beginning With LearnDash

After you’ve installed and activated LearnDash LMS, you’ll notice a LearnDash LMS tab on your WordPress dashboard.

You’ll now be able to create Courses, Lessons, and Quizzes. Here is a guide to help you do this.

Creating A LearnDash Course

Courses are the receptacle that contains all of your lessons. Once you’ve chosen how you want to structure your own online courses, you can start creating.

Navigate to the Courses tab in the LearnDash sub-menu, then press Add New.

Type in your course’s name and description. You’ll notice the option to use course categories on the right side, like a Paid course or a Free course. 

After you’ve established the primary course information, you can navigate to the course builder, which is in the menu at the top of your course’s page.

You can now start to add Lessons. Press Publish/Update to save the course, then press the Back to Courses link on the upper left side.

Creating A LearnDash Lesson

You’ll be providing your course’s content through lessons. Press Lessons from the LearnDash sub-menu and press Add New.

A new post will appear which lets you choose how many lessons you want to teach, as well as the course content of each lesson. You can add as much media as you need, like images, videos, and text. 

You can also choose different options from the Settings tab. Examples include a Forced Lesson Timer which prevents people from moving to another lesson until a particular amount of time has passed.

After you’ve made your lessons, keep publishing and updating them as you would with other WordPress posts.

Creating A LearnDash Quiz

You can access quizzes from the LearnDash sub-menu, just like you can with Lessons and Courses. Press this to access the module and begin.

You should first establish your quiz questions from the Questions menu. You will have to choose what type of question you want, (like fill in the blank or single choice) from the menu in the sidebar. 

After you’ve set your questions, you can start creating a quiz with them. Press the Quizzes sub menu, press Add New, then give your quiz a general description and online course title. 

Next, press the Builder tab to put everything together, which we’ll cover next.

LearnDash Builder

After you’ve made your quiz questions and lessons, you can start organizing them into a general course structure with the Quiz/Course builder.

Navigate to the LearnDash LMS menu, then press Course Name. You’ll notice a tab labeled Builder around the top of the screen. 

After you click this tab, you can start dragging and dropping lessons from the Document sidebar into a box labeled ‘Add a new Lesson or add an existing one from the sidebar’. 

Next, you’ll see a page where you can move these lessons to arrange your lesson. 

If you have Topics that divide your lesson plan, you can add these in the same way. Press the arrow on the right of the Lesson to expand it. These sections will allow you to add topics and quizzes as necessary. 

After you’ve given your course a structure, you can settle the course’s settings from the Settings tab. 

This involves choosing whether the course is free or paid, whether the content is only available to enrolled pupils, or if pre-requirements are needed before someone can enroll, like finishing a previous course. 

Press Update/Publish, then you’re done! 

The Bottom Line

This post goes over the basic information about installing LearnDash. There are lots of articles that go into more detail, but we hope that this post gives you a basic understanding to help you get started. 

After you’ve installed the plugin, you can start creating the site and making your own educational Courses, Lessons, and Quizzes. 

We hope that you enjoy using LearnDash and creating interesting LearnDash LMS courses on your eLearning journey!