LifterLMS 5.0 and Custom Fields 2.0 Guided Tour!

Join LifterLMS on a complimentary training to see what’s new in LifterLMS 5.0 and Custom Fields 2.0. You’ll see how to manage user data inside the WordPress editor, the new shortcode builder, and how to collect and display any user information you can imagine.

Use Coupon Code: FIELDMAGIC to save 20% on Custom Fields add-on or Infinity Bundle Before July 31

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Inside The LifterLMS 5.0 Form Builder And Custom Fields Addon

LifterLMS 5.0 moves the registration, checkout, and edit account forms into the standard WordPress block editor, so any field label, layout, or visibility rule can be edited without code. The Custom Fields addon extends the same editor with ten new field types and lets a site owner attach a unique form to a specific course, membership, or access plan.

What You’ll Learn

• How the three LifterLMS forms (checkout, registration, edit account) work together
• How to edit LifterLMS forms directly in the WordPress block editor
• How LifterLMS Custom Fields adds per-course and per-plan registration forms
• Which field types Custom Fields adds (text, textarea, checkbox, radio, dropdown, email, number, phone, URL, input confirmation)
• How to display captured user data anywhere on the site with the new shortcode builder
• What is next on the LifterLMS roadmap after 5.0

Key Takeaways

• Put a field on the checkout form only when the value should never be edited later
• Use enrollment-based visibility to show fields only to logged in or enrolled users
• Pair LifterLMS with Gravity Forms, WPForms, Ninja Forms, or Formidable when a lesson needs a real feedback or survey form
• Custom Fields is for permanent user data, not one-off form submissions
• Test drive the full stack at lifterlms.com/try before installing on a production site

Frequently Asked Questions

Full Webinar Transcript

Why LifterLMS 5.0 Rethinks User Registration

Hello and welcome to another complimentary LifterLMS training. Today we are looking at LifterLMS 5.0, which rolled out recently, and LifterLMS Custom Fields. Those two rolled out at about the same time. LifterLMS has many people who work on it, and a lot of talented folks help build the product, support the product, and make all the things happen. It has been a great effort getting to LifterLMS 5.0. The LifterLMS project turns seven this October, so we are really close to our birthday.

Every WordPress site has users, and those users have information about them. We all think of users as having email addresses and passwords. When you add LifterLMS, you can collect first name, last name, and a real billing address. What ended up happening is people wanted to be able to add their own custom information, or custom fields, so they could collect things like a company name from every user. To do that, we had to re-envision how the LifterLMS registration process happens.

The Three LifterLMS Forms You Now Control

On the side of your LifterLMS site on 5.0 or later, when you click Forms, you will see three form areas. There are three forms that people fill out that update user information on your site. The first is billing, which is the checkout form. The second is registration, for people signing up without necessarily enrolling in a course. The third is edit account, which is the form logged in students see on their dashboard.

Editing Forms In The WordPress Block Editor

In LifterLMS 5.0 we moved the forms into the standard WordPress block editor. You can essentially create and modify your form however you want. Maybe you do not call the field last name and want to call it surname. Maybe you want to put different placeholder text on a field, or reorder the fields so first name appears before email address.

This is a true WYSIWYG form editor. You can select a field and change the label. You can change the placeholder text. You can change the description that shows under the field. If you click the more precise selection area, you can select the whole component and see its options on the right. If your mouse gets it just right, you can select an entire row, like the user name block that pairs first name and last name, and then decide whether they render side by side or stacked. If you delete a row by accident, use the block inserter at the top of the editor to add it back and move it up or down.

Introducing LifterLMS Custom Fields

The next thing we want to look at is LifterLMS Custom Fields. Once the addon is active, in your Forms screen there is now an Add New Form button. This lets you build a form for something else, like a specific registration form for a specific course, or a specific registration form for a specific membership.

I will call this one Members Only Registration and publish it. Under Manage Location Settings, I can associate this form with a specific membership, for example the Business membership. So now I am attaching this registration form to that membership only. This is how you start having different registration flows on a per course or per membership basis.

Per-Access-Plan Registration Forms

You can even drill into an individual access plan. Say the one-time payment plan needs more information than the recurring plan does. You can attach this custom registration to that specific access plan. If you are using LifterLMS you already know we have access plans, and access plans do everything a membership plugin would do, so you do not need a separate membership plugin. It is all included. These forms are just a part of the registration flow so that somebody can purchase, sign up, and get access to what they are supposed to get access to, all in one user experience optimized flow.

The Ten Field Types You Can Add

Custom user information blocks show up in the inserter once Custom Fields is active. A form is made of fields. We all know what a contact form is: a name field, an email field, and a message field. Those are all different field types. What Custom Fields does is let you build any kind of field you want, not just text.

Available types are: checkboxes, radio buttons, a dropdown a user selects from, single line text, a text area for longer answers, an input confirmation group when you want a value entered twice (like typing an email twice for confirmation), an email field, a number field, a phone number field, and a website URL field. Something like “what is your favorite color” is a single line text. Something like a longer summary of a person’s history is a textarea, where the user gets more than one line to expand.

Adding Company Name, License Number, And T-Shirt Size

Let me edit the global checkout form to show a real example. I am going to add a Company Name single line text field and mark it required. I will add a License Number field, because sometimes people run LifterLMS for CEUs or continuing education units, and they want the company the learner works at and the license number printed on the certificate. That is just one example.

Then I will get a little fancier and add a radio button field with three options: small, medium, large, and extra large. Say the course or the membership ships with a t-shirt. Click update.

Previewing And Testing Your Checkout Form

You can preview your forms. Looking at the checkout flow, this user is already logged in, so the form is smart. It knows who I am and it knows my email address, so it is not asking for those again. The custom fields we added show up under the standard fields. I will fill in the company as Amazon Real Estate, add the license number, and choose the t-shirt size. This test site runs in payment test mode, so I will enter a test credit card, expiration, and CVC, then check out. The order goes through and the user is enrolled in the sample course.

Where Custom Field Data Appears On The User Record

Now in the back end, under Users, I open Samantha. This is the WordPress user screen we are used to seeing, and you can see how the custom fields have been added to this user. In this case the values were captured through a test use of the billing form. All of the custom field data lives on the user record where it belongs.

Merging Custom Field Data Into Certificates With The New Shortcode Builder

If we were to build a certificate, we could start putting that data into it. LifterLMS 5.0 also ships a shortcode builder. Imagine you have a page of content and you want to insert user information into that content, or anywhere else on the site. Over on the right, the LifterLMS rocket icon reveals the shortcodes panel. From there I can insert the user’s first name, or a custom field value, into any page or into the certificate builder. So on a certificate we could merge in the student’s name, company, and license number, all from the same data captured on checkout. That is one example of how the form editor and the shortcode builder work together.

Adding Emergency Contact As A Second Example

Let me go back to the form and add a second real example. I will add a single line text field for Emergency Contact, and another for Emergency Contact Phone Number. The options are truly limitless for what you can do here.

The Difference Between The Checkout And Edit Account Forms

When your students are on their student dashboard, they have an Edit Account link. That is another form the same user can use, this time as a logged in user, to update their information. In the example above we only added the custom field to the billing form, which is the checkout. If you also want the field on the Edit Account form, you have to add it there as well. The three forms are independent, and that is on purpose. This is what lets you collect a value once at checkout and prevent the user from changing it later.

Reusable Form Blocks

If you want to reuse the same custom field on more than one form, save it as a Reusable Block. From the form settings on the field, choose Add to Reusable Blocks. Once a field is reusable, you can drop it into the checkout form, the registration form, and the edit account form, and edits to the block propagate to every form using it.

How To Delete And Rearrange Fields In The Form Editor

Someone asked how to delete blocks from the built-in registration form when the More menu on an address block does not show a delete option. Some of this is just learning how to drive the WordPress block editor. To delete a field like first name or last name, click into the row (not into the label text) so the whole component is selected. If the field is grouped (like the first name and last name pair inside the user name block), select the parent row from the block toolbar, then choose Remove Block. To add it back, use the block inserter at the top of the editor. The Spotlight mode option in the top toolbar dims everything except the block you are working on, and it makes this easier when you are still learning the editor.

Locking Fields So Users Cannot Edit Them Later

Someone asked whether form fields can be locked once submitted. There is no locked toggle, but the same effect comes from placement. Put the License Number field on the billing form only, and leave it off the Edit Account form. When the student opens the Edit Account screen on their dashboard, that field is not there to change. It is a placement strategy rather than a lock setting.

Enrollment-Based Field Visibility

The same person asked about conditional settings. There is not the kind of if-this-then-that conditional logic that Gravity Forms has, but there is enrollment visibility on each field. Any field can be shown to everyone, only to logged in users, or only to users enrolled in a specific course. If you need richer conditional logic, that is where the LifterLMS integrations with Gravity Forms, WPForms, Ninja Forms, and Formidable come in.

When To Use Custom Fields Vs A Form Plugin

Someone asked whether Custom Fields can collect feedback at the end of a course. In theory yes, but that is not what it is designed for. Custom Fields is about user information, values that belong on the user record. If you want a real feedback form on the last lesson, use one of the four form plugin integrations we have on lifterlms.com. Those integrations can require a form completion before the course completes. Another option is the Quiz Builder or the Assignments addon, both of which can collect open-ended responses that show up in reporting.

Working With Elementor And Other Page Builders

Someone asked whether Lifter Elements by Tangible can edit LifterLMS forms with Elementor. That is a question for Tangible, but the important thing to know is that the form builder using the block editor does not mean the rest of the site cannot use a page builder. Elementor, Beaver Builder, Oxygen, and Divi all still work everywhere else on a LifterLMS site.

Field Types That Are Not In The Box Today

Someone asked about a latitude and longitude field. That is not a field type today. The number field can hold a coordinate, but there is no dedicated geo field. A common pattern for member maps on LifterLMS sites is Gravity Forms plus Gravity View, since a member map is one of Gravity View’s stronger use cases. LMScast covered that stack in the Zack Katz Gravity View episode.

What Is Coming Next For LifterLMS

The next major release of LifterLMS is focused on LifterLMS PayPal 2.0. PayPal’s API has finally gotten to a point where we can do what we need to do to make LifterLMS and PayPal work well together. Beyond that, the team is working on the notification system, where people have been asking for more notifications around upcoming payments. So PayPal 2.0 and payment-related notifications are the immediate next focus after 5.0 and Custom Fields.

How To Try LifterLMS Custom Fields Yourself

If you want to try what you saw on the tour, go to lifterlms.com/try. You get a demo site set up like the one used on this webinar, with LifterLMS and the premium addons installed and sample content in place. Depending on the trial tier not every addon is turned on by default, so if you specifically want to test Custom Fields, make sure that addon is active on your demo site, then take it all for a test drive.