Design Upgrade for LearnDash vs Widget Areas for LearnDash

LearnDash is a powerful learning management system (LMS) for managing your online courses, but there are some areas where the design falls short. In order to provide your students with an exceptional learning experience, you need a professional design. Enter Design Upgrade for LearnDash Design Upgrade for LearnDash completely redesigns every aspect of LearnDash so that it closely resembles your existing WordPress theme. No settings or custom code. Just activate & enjoy! Compatible with LD3 & “Legacy” Templates We’ll automatically detect whether you’re using the “LearnDash 3.0” or “Legacy” template, and assign styles appropriately. If you’re still running LearnDash 2.x, all of the same design upgrades that you’ve always enjoyed will still be there. See below for a list of what’s new. Features Tested with LearnDash 4.3.0.2 NEW: Improved styles for the new LearnDash registration process/page Global: Larger clickable areas for all course content, navigation & Focus Mode areas Buttons: All buttons have matching rounded corners & increased font size Font Sizes: These will now be inherited from your theme, which should increase your font sizes across the board Focus Mode: Improved sidebar tray design, Course Sections, shadow added to mobile menu, collapse arrow flips to show current menu state, and more. Focus Mode: Top navigation bar received several small improvements Focus Mode: Improved styles for Focus Mode comments, which were added in LearnDash 3.1 Animations: Subtle animations for LearnDash tooltips & the Focus Mode top menu Profile: Several styles were improved & standardized Login/Registration: Unified styles for all form fields Course Grid: Equal height columns & other small tweaks WisdmLabs Ratings, Reviews & Feedback design upgrades Design improvements for WisdmLabs’ LearnDash Group Registration plugin Improved print styles Also: Small tweaks were made to assignments, pagination, the “User Status” widget and more. LearnDash 2.x “Legacy” Features Tested with LearnDash 2.6.6. We no longer support these features and highly recommend using the LearnDash 3.0 active template. Much improved course grid styles, equal height cards & no more weird spacing issues 👍 All fonts have been reset to use your theme’s default font family, size & color All PNG icons have been replaced with comparable SVGs All complete/incomplete icons for lesson/topic/quiz lists have been moved to the right for better consistency Spacing around & between elements has been adjusted to provide greater consistency throughout All LearnDash widgets now have more consistent spacing & sizing, including improvements to Course Info & Course Navigation Styling for the [ld_profile] shortcode has been completely revamped Completely revamped & restyled quiz elements 💯 Improved design of the statistics modal window (for quizzes), including row highlights on hover Larger pager navigation buttons to improve usability Full support for RTL languages Who is this for? Brand new LearnDash users: There is absolutely no reason not to try it out. At the very least, it will give your site a more consistent design. If you plan to customize LearnDash further, you can still do so using a child theme or Additional CSS in the Customizer. Seasoned LearnDash veterans: If you have not made any customizations to your LearnDash design, but would like to improve it, give us a shot. You might want to try it out on a test site first, but you can deactivate it with one click and return to your previous design. You might also want to give your students a heads up that you’re updating the design. But we feel confident that they’ll like it 🙂 LearnDash developers: If you’re a developer who builds LearnDash sites for your clients, this could save you hours (maybe even days) of development time. LearnDash’s markup & CSS is a beast to customize. This will give you a much easier baseline to work with. We designed the plugin to be just specific enough to override LearnDash’s default styles, but not so specific that you’ll need to use a ton of selectors to override our specifity. All CSS in child themes and Additional CSS will take precedence over our styles. Pro Version Need custom styles? Our pro version uses the Customizer to bring you over 110 customizable design options. Completely customize your LearnDash site with just a few clicks. Pro Features Achievements Add-On: 10 new customization options Show/Hide various course & profile features Disable expand/collapse links & show all by default Course Content Lists: Update background & text colors, hover effects, customize line separators, remove the list count numbers and more Progress Bar: Customize the color, border radius & height, add stripes, and animate the bar on page load Buttons: Add your own background & text colors [ld_profile]: Avatar shape, custom “edit profile” link, hide profile info, hide quiz information, and more Login/Registration Popup: 10+ design options Focus Mode: 20+ design options, including 7 for Focus Mode comments Course Navigation Widget: 15+ design options Course Grid Add-On: 20+ design options Alerts: 9 custom colors, plus a few other options Tooltips: customize the background & text color Uncanny Groups: buttons, border radius & improved styles are applied to many Uncanny Groups frontend elements Tin Canny Reporting: 12 design options for Tin Canny reports on the front-end Upgrade to Pro Today » Theme Compatibility Design Upgrade for LearnDash should work on most themes, assuming they have not customized the LearnDash markup in any way. While we can’t guarantee full compatibility, we have tested with the following themes. Tested With We have tested with the following themes, and they all appear to be compatible: Astra Divi GeneratePress eLumine (when using the “LearnDash 3.0” active template or eLumine’s “Elementary Layouts”) LearnMate Edufire Neve OceanWP Incompatible Themes BuddyBoss Platform (released June 2019) Boss. / Social Learner (If you deactivate the “Boss for LearnDash” plugin, it will still work in “Legacy” mode) eLumine (when using the “Legacy” active template or any version of LearnDash before 3.0) Incompatible Plugins LearnDash Visual Customizer by SnapOrbital: The Visual Customizer takes a similar approach to designing LearnDash components, and thus the code conflicts with ours. Uncanny Owl Toolkit Compatibility We recognize the Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit by Uncanny Owl is a popular LearnDash plugin that adds some nice features. We’re in the process of making our plugin fully compatible with theirs. Here’s where we are so far: Reset Progress button: Button styles upgraded Simple Course Timer modal: Button styles upgraded [uo_dashboard]: Styles upgraded [uo_courses]: Styles upgraded [uo_breadcrumbs]: Compatible; Considering upgrades [uo_lessons_topics_grid]: Compatible; Considering upgrades [uo_login_ui]: Compatible; Considering upgrades NOTE: Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit styles are only upgraded if you’re using the “LearnDash 3.0” active template. Styles do not apply to the “Legacy” template. Plugin Compatibility Ratings, Reviews & Feedback plugin by WisdmLabs As of version 2.5, we now enhance the styles of the Ratings, Reviews & Feedback plugin by WisdmLabs. For a detailed overview, please see our article on ldx.design. Group Registration plugin by WisdmLabs As of version 2.6, we now enhance the styles of the Group Registration plugin by WisdmLabs. General design improvements will be made to all frontend elements output by the [wdm_group_users] shortcode. Browser Support A few techniques we use to improve the LearnDash design are only supported in the latest versions of major browsers. For the most part, as long as you’re not using Internet Explorer, most (if not all) of our plugin’s design upgrades will work. We support the latest versions of the following browsers: Google Chrome Mozilla Firefox Apple Safari Microsoft Edge Chrome for Android Firefox for Android iOS Safari (not tested, but should work) We do not support any version of Internet Explorer, however, we do offer a few code snippets & suggestions to fix a few issues in IE11. See the IE11 section below in FAQ. Roadmap As LearnDash adds new features, it is our goal to keep this plugin updated. Features planned for future release: New features for the Quiz Reporting Extension by WisdmLabs Compatibility with more Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit modules We’d love to hear from you! Does something look weird with your theme? Is there something we missed? Wouldn’t it be cool if… We tested it on a handful of popular themes, but we couldn’t possibly cover them all. If you have any feedback, please let us know in the support forum. Credits Paint brush icon made by Freepik, courtesy of flaticon.com. Licensed under CC3.0 BY. Gradient by colorful gradients From within WordPress Visit “Plugins > Add New” Search for “Design Upgrade for LearnDash” Click the “Install” button Click the “Activate” button There are no settings to configure. An improved design will automatically be applied to all LearnDash elements on your site.

Widget Areas for LearnDash simply gives you more places to add custom content in LearnDash. By utilizing built-in LearnDash action hooks, we assign widget areas (also known as “sidebars”) to various locations throughout your LearnDash pages. Available LearnDash Widget Areas Focus Mode: Sidebar: Above Navigation Focus Mode: Sidebar: Below Navigation Focus Mode: Content: Start Focus Mode: Below Content Course Page: Content: Start Course Page: Content: End Group Page: Content: Start Group Page: Content: End Requires the “LearnDash 3.0” Active Template. Tested with LearnDash 4.23. How to Use Upon activating the plugin, new widget areas will appear on the Appearance > Widgets screen in your WordPress admin area. You can also access them via the Customizer (Appearance > Customize > Widgets). Simply add the blocks/widgets you’d like to insert into the corresponding widget areas. Be sure to click the “Save” button at the bottom. Navigate to a page that contains that widget area, refresh, and your new widgets will be there. Types of Content to Add WordPress comes with a set of default widgets, several of which might be useful. If you’re using the new block editor, all blocks will also be available to you. Add a simple Paragraph block with some basic text Add an Image or Video/Embed block for more visual content Add a Navigation Menu widget to insert a custom menu you’ve created Add your own Custom HTML widget to embed an or write your own code TIP: You can use the LearnDash Student and LearnDash Visitor blocks to display a block’s contents only to enrolled students or unenrolled visitors. LearnDash Widgets LearnDash comes prepackaged with a few widgets, but there’s probably only one that makes sense in these widget areas. Add a Course Progress Bar to the top or bottom of your Focus Mode sidebar Feel free to experiment with the other LearnDash widgets. Elementor Templates If you’re using Elementor Pro, you can create a custom section and embed it anywhere on your site, including in your new LearnDash widget areas. There are two ways to do this: When you go to insert a block/widget, select the Elementor Library widget. Choose a template from the dropdown menu. Click “Save.” Navigate to Templates > Saved Templates. Copy the shortcode next to the template you want to insert. Now you’ll insert a Shortcode block into the widget area, and paste the shortcode. For more information, see the article in Elementor’s knowledge base. Widget Area CSS Class Names If you need to target the widget areas to apply custom styles using CSS, you can use the following class names. All widget areas have the .ldx-widget-area class. Focus Mode: Sidebar: Above Navigation – .ldx-widget-area.fm-nav-before Focus Mode: Sidebar: After Navigation – .ldx-widget-area.fm-nav-after Focus Mode: Content: Start – .ldx-widget-area.fm-content-start Focus Mode: Below Content – .ldx-widget-area.fm-content-bottom Course Page: Content: Start – .ldx-widget-area.course-content-start Course Page: Content: End – .ldx-widget-area.course-content-end Group Page: Content: Start – .ldx-widget-area.group-content-start Group Page: Content: End – .ldx-widget-area.group-content-end Example Usage: .ldx-widget-area.fm-nav-before { margin: 1em; } This would add 1em of spacing around the widget area that appears above the navigation in the Focus Mode sidebar. In addition, all widgets placed inside of a widget area have a class of .ldx-widget. Show/Hide Widgets on Certain Devices While not a direct feature of this plugin, you can show/hide widgets on different devices using another free plugin. Install & activate the Widget Options plugin Navigate to the widget that you’d like to adjust the visibility on Scroll to the bottom and click on the tab with the mobile phone Choose to either show or hide on the checked devices Check the appropriate devices Click “Save” Show/Hide Widgets on Specific Course/Lesson/Topic Pages Another feature of the free Widget Options plugin (mentioned above) is to only show widgets on specific course, lesson, topic or quiz pages. Install & activate the Widget Options plugin Navigate to the widget that you’d like to adjust the visibility on Scroll to the bottom and click on the settings cog icon Click on the Logic tab In the text box, you can use the is_single() conditional tag to only display that widget on a specific page Use the ID of the course, lesson, topic or quiz 👉 How to find the ID of LearnDash content Example: This would only display the widget on the page with an ID of 7: is_single( '7' ) If you wanted to display a widget on multiple pages (with IDs of 1, 2 and 3), your code would look like this: is_single( array( 1, 2, 3 ) ) There are many more WordPress conditional tags you can use. From within WordPress Visit “Plugins > Add New” Search for “Widget Areas for LearnDash” Click the “Install” button Click the “Activate” button Navigate to “Appearance > Widgets” or open the Customizer to start adding blocks/widgets to your new widget areas