The course access settings allow you to define a set of criteria for how a user gains and maintains access to your course. We’ll go through all the options, some of which include a one-time payment, recurring payments, free access, prerequisites and more.
Table of Contents [show]1 Locating Course Access Settings2 Access Mode2.1 Open2.2 Free2.3 Buy Now2.4 Recurring2.5 Course Enrollment URL2.6 Closed3 Course Prerequisites4 Course Points4.1 Required for Access4.2 Awarded on Completion5 Course Access Expiration6 Alter Course Access List6.1 Was this article helpful to you?
Locating Course Access Settings
Navigate to LEARNDASH LMS > COURSES
Click on the course you want to edit
Click on the Settings tab at the top of the page
Locate the section titled “Course Access Settings”
Access Mode
Access mode is how you determine the way in which someone can gain access to a course (completely free, free with registration required, one-time payment, recurring subscription, etc.). LearnDash has 5 course access modes to choose from.
Open
The following rules apply to Open courses:
Free & open to anyone visiting your site
No registration, login or payment is required for access
Must be registered/logged in to track course progress
Linear Progression does not apply
NOTE
If you have Open courses on your site, as soon as someone registers an account, they will automatically gain access to all Open courses.
Free
The following rules apply to Free courses:
Must be registered/logged in to access
No payment is required
“Take this Course” button is shown to users not yet enrolled. They are sent through the registration process. If you’re using LearnDash’s customized login & registration, the button will say “Login to Enroll.”
The Free access mode is a good choice if you want an administrator to manually enroll students into the course.
Buy Now
The following rules apply to Buy Now courses:
Must be registered/logged in to access
Requires a one-time fee to be paid (no free access)
Only works with the following payment methods: PayPal, Stripe & 2Checkout
Do not use if you’re selling courses via a shopping cart or membership plugin (see Closed below)
The Buy Now access mode does not allow you to use discounts/coupons. Consider using an ecommerce or membership integration, along with the Closed access mode.
When using the Buy Now mode, you need to enter a price in the Course Price field.
First, select the Buy Now access mode
Then, enter your price in the Course Price field
Enabling the “Buy Now” access mode also allows you to let your users use their achievement points to purchase a course. Here’s how to do it using the Achievements Add-on.
NOTE
For both “Buy Now” and “Recurring” access modes, the user will be automatically enrolled into the course upon a completed payment.
Recurring
Recurring is very similar to Buy Now, except for recurring payments (as opposed to one-time payments).
The following rules apply to Recurring courses:
Must be registered/logged in to access
Requires a recurring fee (choose a billing cycle in X days, weeks, months or years)
Only works with the following payment methods: PayPal, Stripe & 2Checkout
Do not use if you’re selling courses via a shopping cart or membership plugin (see Closed below)
To set up the Recurring access mode:
Select the Recurring option
In the Course Price field, enter the amount you’d like to charge
Enter the amount of days/weeks/months/years on which you’d like the user to be billed again
Choose either day(s), week(s), month(s) or year(s) from the dropdown
NOTE
If choosing day(s), you must provide a number between 1-90.
You also have the option to control the recurring subscription with the following fields:
Recurring Times – determines how many times the billing cycle repeats. Leave empty for unlimited repeats
Course Trial Price – fill this out if you want to have a trial period for the course with a special “trial” price
Trial Duration – determine length of the trial period. After the trial is over, the normal course price billing goes into effect.
Course Enrollment URL
This field allows you to set a per-course redirect on your courses. Fill this out with the URL where you want your users to be redirected to after registration or enrollment.
You may have courses that you want to upsell, other offers, or even other course materials you want the users to download first, this setting will help you redirect the users to those pages after enrollment. They will also be automatically logged in and registered if they register on the native LearnDash Registration page.
NOTE
This option is only available for the “Recurring” and “Buy Now” options.
Closed
The following rules apply to Closed courses:
Must be registered/logged in to access
Allows you to sell your course via an ecommerce or membership add-on
Enables a custom Button URL field, which sends users to a custom sales or checkout page (a button is only shown if you enter a URL)
Manually enroll users into the course, or add them via group enrollment
When you choose Closed, you are essentially telling LearnDash to restrict access to your course, but don’t do anything else. You either let an ecommerce/membership add-on handle course access, or manually add users yourself. You can also add users to the course via group enrollment.
To redirect the Take this Course button to a custom URL:
First, select the Closed access mode
Then, enter the URL where you’d like the button to go
Course Prerequisites
Prerequisites allow you to choose another course (or courses) that a user must complete before taking this course. When selecting a course(s), you have two options:
Any Selected (default)
If a user has completed any one of the selected courses, they will be able to access this course.
All Selected
The user must complete all selected courses in order to access this course.
To add a course prerequisite:
Next to Course Prerequisites, toggle the setting on
Choose either Any Selected or All Selected
Click in the box to search for a course. Add as many courses as you’d like.
To remove a course prerequisite:
Click the x next to the course name
Course Points
Course points are a simple way to incentive your users. They can also be used as a prerequisite for another course.
To enable course points:
Next to Course Points, toggle the setting on
Required for Access
This is the number of points a user must obtain before gaining access to the course.
For example, let’s say you have a few beginner-level courses that each award 50 points upon completion. You might also have an intermediate-level course. If you want the student to complete at least 2 beginner-level courses (2 courses x 50 points/ea. = 100 points) before taking the intermediate-level course, you could set the required for access setting to 100 points.
Awarded on Completion
This is the number of points a user will receive for completing the course. In the above example, all of your beginner-level courses would set this value to 50.
NOTE
The provided examples are just to explain how course points work. You can use any numbers you’d like, and customize the course points to fit your learning curriculum.
Course Access Expiration
With course access expiration, you can choose to provide access to a course for a limited time period, based on the user’s enrollment date (aka: when they signed up for the course).
Next to Course Access Expiration, toggle the setting on
Enter the number of days the course will be available for
This will automatically count that many days from the user’s enrollment date
Choose whether or not you want the user’s course & quiz data to be deleted when access expires
WARNING
Once data is deleted, it is gone forever. If you choose to enable the Data deletion setting, we recommend you make a backup first.
Alter Course Access List
WARNING
We do not recommend manually updating the course access list as it can have unintended negative consequences.
The course access list displays a list of enrolled users by user ID. Each user ID is separated by a comma. Due to a wide variety of add-ons & third-party plugins that affect course enrollment dynamically, this list might not always reflect all enrolled users.
The recommended way to add or remove a user from a course is from the user’s profile page in the WordPress admin area. See user management to learn more.
If you need to alter the course access list:
Next to Alter Course Access List, toggle the setting on
In the box that appears, add or delete the user IDs you want to change. Remember to separate them with commas.
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