Installation

Requirements

• WordPress 6.4 or later
• PHP 7.4 or later
• Any properly coded theme, including block themes

Install the free plugin

1. In wp-admin, go to Plugins → Add New.
2. Search for CourseGlade.
3. Click Install Now, then Activate.

What activation sets up

On activation CourseGlade prepares everything you need:

• Database tables for enrollments, progress, orders, quiz attempts, coupons, earnings, and more
• Roles — CourseGlade Instructor and CourseGlade Student — plus custom capabilities added to administrators and editors
• Default settings — currency USD, default commission 70%, minimum withdrawal $50, earnings maturity 7 days, 12 courses per page
• Difficulty terms — Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, All Levels
• Pages — created and assigned automatically (below)

Your WordPress default registration role is left untouched — plain subscribers are promoted to the student role only when they first enroll.

Setup checklist

The dashboard includes a first-run setup checklist for the initial configuration pass. It checks four live conditions:

• Check your pages — confirm that the Courses, Checkout, Login, Dashboard, and other LMS pages exist and are assigned.
• Publish your first course — make at least one course visible to students.
• Turn on a payment gateway — enable Stripe, WooCommerce, or Manual/Offline payment; free enrollment alone does not complete this item.
• Let students create accounts — enable WordPress registration so new visitors can enroll or purchase.

The checklist links each incomplete item to the relevant screen and updates as the site changes.

The checklist is a guide, not a requirement: you can continue working in the plugin while items remain incomplete, and it does not change WordPress’s own registration settings.

Roles and capabilities

Activation creates two CourseGlade roles:

• CourseGlade Student — access the student dashboard, enrolled courses, learning mode, quizzes, reviews, Q&A, orders, and profile settings.
• CourseGlade Instructor — create and manage courses they teach, respond to learner questions, review their submissions, see their earnings, and request withdrawals when the relevant capabilities are enabled.

CourseGlade also adds LMS capabilities to administrators and editors. Administrators can manage the full academy; editors can be granted the relevant course-management capabilities without becoming instructors. Pro features such as assignments, gradebook, reports, and live classes add their own capability checks when enabled.

Pages created on install

Each page is created with the matching shortcode and remembered by setting (not slug), so renaming or moving is safe:

Page	Shortcode
Courses	[courseglade_courses]
Dashboard	[courseglade_dashboard]
Course Checkout	[courseglade_checkout]
Become an Instructor	[courseglade_become_instructor]
Student Registration	[courseglade_auth tab="register"]
Login	[courseglade_auth tab="login"]
Forgot Password	[courseglade_forgot_password]
Reset Password	[courseglade_reset_password]

If a valid page already exists, it’s kept rather than duplicated. Page assignments live in Settings → General → Pages.

Install Pro

Pro is an addon layer that requires the free plugin to be active.

1. Download courseglade-lms-pro.zip from your purchase receipt.
2. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip, and install.
3. Activate. If the free plugin is missing, Pro deactivates itself with a notice — install free first.

Activate your license

With Pro active, a License tab appears in the CourseGlade top nav, after Settings. It’s admin-only — instructors never see it — and it’s absent entirely on the free plugin.

Activating unlocks plugin updates and premium support; the Pro addons themselves run without it.

1. Go to CourseGlade → License.
2. Enter your License code (in the form xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx, from your purchase receipt).
3. Optionally set the Email address — product update news goes there.
4. Click Activate.

Once active the page shows a Valid badge plus your License type, Expires on and Support until dates (each with a Renew link when applicable), and your license key masked. A Deactivate license button releases the seat so you can move the license to another site.

If the tab shows “Could not load license status”, the Pro plugin isn’t active — the license endpoints live in Pro.

Turn on the addons you need

Go to CourseGlade → Addons. Every Pro addon has its own toggle. Only enabled addons load code, so keep unused ones off.

Next steps

• Create your first course
• Settings overview
• Set up Stripe payments