Learn with Foundation docs

Learn with Foundation is a WordPress-native LMS layer. It turns content you already publish, alongside the WooCommerce store you already run, into a branded academy with enrollment, progress tracking, quizzes, and verifiable certificates.

How it differs from traditional LMS plugins

• Content-model agnostic: it attaches to your existing course post type instead of forcing a proprietary structure or a content migration.
• Commerce-driven enrollment is a designed journey through purchase, identity, activation, sign-in, and access, not just a webhook.
• Split-domain ready: run the shop on your main site and the academy on a learning subdomain.
• Certificates are verification-ready, with a public verification page, not just completion badges.
• Templates are theme-overridable, so the learner experience matches your brand.

Supported versions

• WordPress 6.0 or newer
• PHP 8.0 or newer
• Pretty permalinks enabled
• WooCommerce for paid course access; optional for free courses

Relationship to WooCommerce

WooCommerce handles selling, including products, checkout, payments, and refunds. Learn with Foundation handles everything after the order: enrollment, account provisioning, activation, access control, learning, progress, and certificates. WooCommerce is optional for the free, lead-generation tier and required once you sell paid access.

1. Install the plugin

Upload the foundation-learn folder to wp-content/plugins/, or install the zipped plugin from Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.

2. Activate

Activate Learn with Foundation from the Plugins screen. On activation it registers its post types, database tables, and default settings.

3. Required pages

Learn with Foundation creates (or lets you assign) the pages that make up the learner experience:

• My Learning: the learner dashboard
• Sign in: learner authentication
• Lesson Player: course playback
• Certificate verification: public verification page

Confirm each page is assigned under Learn with Foundation → Settings → Pages.

4. WooCommerce setup

• Install and activate WooCommerce, then complete its store setup.
• Create a product for each paid course.
• Link the product to its course (see WooCommerce Integration).
• Choose your guest-checkout and auto-provisioning policy under Learner Access.

1. 01 Connect your course CPT. Open Learn with Foundation → Discover Courses, scan the site, and map the post type that stores your courses.
2. 02 Create a course. Add a course (or open an existing one) and give it a title, summary, and cover image.
3. 03 Create a lesson. Add at least one video or text lesson and attach it to the course in the Course Builder.
4. 04 Add a product. Create a WooCommerce product for the course and link the two so a sale grants access.
5. 05 Purchase. Complete checkout and move the order to a granting status. The learner is provisioned and receives an activation email.
6. 06 Learn. Activate the account, open My Learning, play the lesson, and watch progress update.

That is the full loop: discovery, authoring, commerce, enrollment, and learning. Everything else in these docs builds on it.

Content-model agnostic architecture

Learn with Foundation does not require a proprietary 'course' post type. It can treat any registered post type as a course source, so you keep your existing editorial workflow and avoid a migration.

Course discovery

Open Learn with Foundation → Discover Courses and run a scan. Learn with Foundation inspects your registered post types and surfaces the ones that look like course content.

Mapping external CPTs

Pick the post type that holds your courses and map its fields, including title, summary, cover image, and the relationship to lessons. Once mapped, those posts become first-class courses Learn with Foundation can enroll, gate, and certify, without changing how you edit them.

Modules

Modules group related lessons into sections. Use them to chapter a course.

Lessons

Lessons are the unit of learning, whether video or text. Each lesson tracks its own completion.

Quizzes

Quizzes check understanding and can gate progress. Attach them to a module or to the end of a course.

Ordering

Drag modules, lessons, and quizzes into the sequence learners should follow. With sequential access enabled, each item unlocks as the previous one is completed.

Guest checkout

Buyers can purchase without an account. Learn with Foundation captures the order email as the identity for the learner.

Auto-provisioning

On a completed order, Learn with Foundation creates or matches a learner account from the order email and enrolls it in the purchased course.

Activation

The learner receives a branded activation email with a secure link to set a password and confirm the account.

Sign-in

Once activated, the learner signs in and lands on My Learning with their courses ready.

Access flow

Purchase (WooCommerce order completed)
        ↓
Identity (match or create account from order email)
        ↓
Auto-provision (enroll in purchased course)
        ↓
Activation email (secure set-password link)
        ↓
Sign in
        ↓
My Learning (enrolled & ready)

Templates

Certificate templates are stored as fl_certificate posts with customizable settings such as copy, organization, colors, and layout style. Theme-level full template replacement is limited today; see Theme Overrides for the supported override surface.

Course association

Associate a certificate with a course so completion automatically issues it. The learner receives a PDF by email and can download it anytime from My Learning.

Verification

Each certificate carries a unique number and a public verification URL. Anyone, including an employer or registrar, can confirm it is genuine without logging in.

Public verification confirms the learner name, course, issue date, and certificate identifiers. It does not expose the learner's email address.

Product mapping

Link a WooCommerce product to a Learn with Foundation course. One product can grant a single course or several (bundles).

Enrollment

When an order reaches a granting status, Learn with Foundation provisions the learner and enrolls them in the mapped course(s).

Order statuses

• Completed / Processing: grants access (you choose which statuses grant).
• On-hold / Pending: no access until the order advances.
• Cancelled / Failed: no access.

Refund behavior

Refunded or cancelled orders can expire course access while retaining learner progress. Confirm your payment gateway refund and cancellation events trigger the expected access changes whenever gateway settings change.

My Learning is the dashboard a learner sees after signing in. It lists every course they are enrolled in, shows progress for each, and surfaces a single 'continue learning' action that jumps to the next incomplete lesson.

• Enrolled courses with cover art and progress bars
• Continue-learning shortcut to the next lesson
• Access to earned certificates and downloads

Video mode

Video lessons embed your player of choice. Scrubbing behavior is configurable, so you can require learners to watch through before a lesson is marked complete.

Text mode

Text-first lessons render formatted content for reading-based courses. Completion can be manual ('Mark complete') or automatic on reaching the end.

Progress tracking

Each lesson reports completion to the Progress Service. The player shows where the learner is in the course and unlocks the next item when sequential access is enabled.

Passing scores

Set a passing threshold per quiz. Learners must meet it to count the quiz as passed.

Gating

A quiz can gate the rest of the course, keeping the next module locked until the learner passes.

Attempts

Learn with Foundation records quiz attempts and supports an unlimited-retries toggle for learner practice.

Learn with Foundation is a pipeline of focused services. Each stage hands off to the next, so you can reason about and extend one concern at a time.

Course CPT
     ↓
Discover Courses
     ↓
Course Resolver
     ↓
Enrollment Service
     ↓
Progress Service
     ↓
Certificate Service

• Course CPT: your existing course content, untouched.
• Discover Courses: maps that post type into Learn with Foundation.
• Course Resolver: resolves a course and its curriculum at runtime.
• Enrollment Service: grants and revokes access from commerce events.
• Progress Service: records lesson and quiz completion.
• Certificate Service: issues and verifies credentials on completion.

fl_enrollments
fl_progress
fl_quiz_attempts
fl_issued_certificates

Key fields

• fl_enrollments: user_id, course_type, course_id, status, source_order_id, created_at. One row per learner per course.
• fl_progress: user_id, lesson_id, course_type, course_id, status, completed_at, position_seconds. Tracks lesson progress.
• fl_quiz_attempts: user_id, quiz_id, course_type, course_id, score, passed, answers_json, created_at. One row per recorded attempt.
• fl_issued_certificates: certificate_number, user_id, course_type, course_id, certificate_template_id, issued_at, emailed_at. One row per issued certificate.

Certificate templates

Certificate designs are stored as fl_certificate posts. Issued learner credentials are stored separately in fl_issued_certificates.

Relationships

Learner-state tables key off user_id plus course_type and course_id. Enrollment is the parent record; progress and quiz attempts accumulate against it; an issued certificate is the terminal record written when the completion rules are satisfied.

GET  /wp-json/foundation-learn/v1/continue-learning
POST /wp-json/foundation-learn/v1/progress/{lesson_id}
POST /wp-json/foundation-learn/v1/quizzes/{quiz_id}/attempt
GET  /wp-json/foundation-learn/v1/certificates/verify/{certificate_number}

• GET /continue-learning: logged-in learner endpoint for the next incomplete lesson across enrolled courses.
• POST /progress/{lesson_id}: logged-in enrolled learner endpoint to update progress or mark a lesson complete.
• POST /quizzes/{quiz_id}/attempt: logged-in enrolled learner endpoint to submit a quiz attempt and receive score and pass/fail.
• GET /certificates/verify/{certificate_number}: public, read-only endpoint for certificate verification. No learner login required.

Learn with Foundation template tags load template parts from your theme first. Place supported part files in a foundation-learn folder in your active theme; otherwise the plugin uses its bundled template part.

theme/
└── foundation-learn/
    ├── course-cta.php
    ├── dashboard-body.php
    └── landing-body.php

How resolution works

Template parts loaded through Learn with Foundation's public template tags check your theme's foundation-learn/ directory before falling back to the plugin. Full app routes such as lesson, quiz, My Learning, profile, and certificate verification currently use plugin route templates unless you integrate through the documented hooks, filters, or render functions.

Hooks and filters are grouped by the domain they affect. This is a representative set, not a per-hook page.

Enrollment

foundation_learn_user_enrolled
fl_enrollment_expired

Progress

fl_lesson_completed
fl_progress_updated

Emails

foundation_learn_activation_email_subject
foundation_learn_activation_email_body
foundation_learn_certificate_email_subject
foundation_learn_certificate_email_body

Branding is driven by tokens you set globally and can override per course.

brand_color
accent_color
header_image

• brand_color: primary brand color across the academy.
• accent_color: highlights, buttons, and progress indicators.
• header_image: banner used on learner pages and certificates.

Per-course styling

Any token can be overridden on an individual course, so a single academy can carry distinct looks for different programs.

wp fl dedupe
wp fl reset-curriculum

• wp fl dedupe: remove duplicate curriculum content created by repeated setup runs.
• wp fl reset-curriculum: remove generated curriculum for a course.

Automated coverage today

• Learner access, identity matching, enrollment idempotency, LMS-domain URL handling, progress services, certificate issuance, certificate PDFs, verification payloads, selected REST/controller paths, and license-server behavior.
• Selected Playwright journeys cover learner access, learning loops, certificate completion, course-builder concepts, full learner journeys, and license purchase activation when the matching local stack is configured.

Validate per project

• The foundation-ecommerce theme, foundation-demo-core setup plugin, checkout flow, docs UI, and cross-version WooCommerce compatibility should be treated as project-specific validation surfaces until dedicated tests are added.
• Payment gateway refund/cancellation behavior should be tested with the gateway and order statuses used in production.