LifterLMS Private Areas Rolled Out to the World Today! This is a Replay of Today’s Ask Us Anything Webinar.

Today July 31, 2017 is the last day to get Private Areas or the Infinity Bundle (which includes Private Areas and much much more) before the price goes up.

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Watch The LifterLMS Private Areas Launch Party Webinar

Chris Badgett, Thomas Levy, and Ali Mathis walk through the LifterLMS Private Areas add-on on launch day. Private Areas gives every student a private, one-to-one posting space with the site owner or a coach, scoped per student, per course, or per membership. This session covers the feature set, the new Automations engine for delivering scheduled coaching posts, and live Q&A on page builders, licensing, translations, and how to display private areas on any page.

What You’ll Learn

• What LifterLMS Private Areas is and how it fits alongside your public course content
• How Private Areas Automations deliver a scheduled series of private posts tied to an access plan
• Ways to display Private Areas on your site using the shortcode, the widget, and post ID targeting
• How the Private Areas add-on plays with page builders like Divi and Beaver Builder
• The philosophy behind LifterLMS support, licensing, translations, and third-party contributions

Key Takeaways

• Pair a low-priced course with a higher-priced “course plus coaching” access plan and let a Private Areas automation deliver the coaching sequence.
• Rename Private Areas to match your niche. Office Hours, Coaches Corner, My Studio, My Training Area. Whatever your students actually call it.
• Use the Private Area Info widget on your course and lesson sidebars for zero-configuration display, and reach for the shortcode with a post ID when you need to show multiple private areas on the same page.
• Back up your site and test new plugins in a staging environment before rolling changes to production, especially when installing bundles that carry a theme and multiple plugins together.
• When you file a support ticket, include a WordPress System Report. Environment details are usually what turns a slow ticket into a fast one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Full Webinar Transcript

What LifterLMS Private Areas Does For Coaching Sites

Chris Badgett: Welcome to this Ask Us Anything webinar on Private Areas launch day. Private Areas is out in the LifterLMS store, Infinity Bundle customers see it as a download in their account, and we also rolled out LifterLMS core 3.11 today. I am joined by Thomas Levy and Ali Mathis. What Private Areas allows you to do is create private posts between the teacher and the student. It can be per student, per course, or per member per membership. We also rolled out a really awesome feature called Automations, where you can pre-schedule a series of private posts that drip out over time. Those can be triggered automatically off of which access plan someone enrolled through.

The most common use case is when you have a course you sell for one hundred dollars, and then an upsell where you offer that same course plus coaching for one thousand dollars. You can have a whole series of private posts scheduled in advance to roll out when a student enrolls through the course-plus-coaching access plan. That is an update to the LifterLMS core. It gives you a new engagement trigger where you can tie into which access plan somebody enrolled through. When we roll out new products at LifterLMS, we are often updating the core at the same time.

Back Up Your Site Before Installing Any WordPress Plugin

Chris Badgett: An attendee has the Infinity Bundle but has not yet started with it and asks whether it installs like any ordinary WordPress plugin. The Infinity Bundle is a collection of plugins plus a theme called Launchpad, plus some digital downloads in LifterLMS Pro like certificate backgrounds, achievement badge graphics, and notification icons.

Most of it is plugins that install like any other WordPress plugin. The common trip-up is trying to upload the LifterLMS Pro zip or the Launchpad theme zip as a plugin. They are not plugins. The best thing to do is log into your account on lifterlms.com, go to your downloads, and note that Launchpad is a theme and the LifterLMS Pro Graphics Pack is a folder of images you unzip on your own machine.

Ali Mathis: One thing to add. Any time you install anything, back your website up. It is just a best practice. You will be very thankful when you get in the habit of it, and testing new things in a staging environment is worth every minute you put into it.

Chris Badgett: This is why we love WP Engine. Daily automatic backups, restore points, a staging environment for testing updates before you push them to production. It is not the cheapest hosting on the planet, but it is a lifesaver. We use WP Engine to host all of our internal web properties.

Moving A LifterLMS License From One Site To Another

Ali Mathis: An attendee invested in the Infinity Bundle. She wants to confirm that when she moves her course to a new site and deletes it from the previous one, she can use the same license key.

Chris Badgett: The way LifterLMS licenses work is a license gives you access to automatic updates and support. If you need to move a license key from one site to another, deactivate it on the site you no longer want it on, then activate it on the new one. If you try to activate it somewhere else while it is still active, it will not work. If you decide later that you want to run multiple LifterLMS projects, we can help you upgrade to the developer license.

Thomas Levy: One case that comes up. You activated it on a local test site and then deleted the test site. You are not stuck. Log into your lifterlms.com account, go to the licenses screen, and deactivate the license from there. Then reactivate it wherever you want.

The License Controls Updates And Support, Not Whether The Plugin Runs

Thomas Levy: We do not disable functionality if your license is deactivated. Once you have the plugin, you can technically install it wherever you want. The license grants you support and automatic updates through our servers. That is why the developer license exists for people running multiple sites, and it is also why staging is easy. Activate your live site with the license, and on your staging site just install the plugin manually from your account downloads. You do not need an active license on staging to test an update. When the update passes on staging, use the one-click updater on your live site, which is where the license activation actually lives.

Divi Support For The Private Post Type

Chris Badgett: A question about Divi support. We know the Divi community is passionate, and the LiftyDivi add-on is what makes LifterLMS work well with Divi. Do we have LiftyDivi support for the private post types yet?

Thomas Levy: Not yet. It is a small ask and it is on my list. LiftyDivi is a collection of a very small number of actions that make some Divi magic happen for LifterLMS post types. For anyone who is comfortable with a little development, Divi’s own documentation walks through how to add Divi support to a custom post type. You do not have to wait on me. Or wait a couple of weeks and we will ship an update to LiftyDivi that adds support for the private post type.

Beaver Builder And Front-End Page Builders

Thomas Levy: A question about Beaver Builder. Beaver Builder tends to pick up custom post types once you enable it in the settings. I have not tested it against private posts yet. There is a wrinkle. Beaver Builder is a front-end editor, so when you switch into it, the plugin is looking at the front-end view. A course lesson has two versions, the one enrolled students see and the one visitors see. Beaver Builder does not know about LifterLMS enrollment status, so the enrolled-student view is invisible to it. That is a problem for private posts specifically, because a private post only exists for the enrolled student. You may not be able to edit private posts inside Beaver Builder for that reason. A proper LifterLMS integration is on our backlog.

Chris Badgett: One way to help. Let Beaver Builder know that you want a LifterLMS integration. Every WooCommerce integration on ThemeForest exists because WooCommerce users made noise for it. If enough of you ask Beaver Builder for LifterLMS support, they will build it. Same goes for Beaver Themer.

Growing The LifterLMS Team From One Developer

Faro: I want to say two things. LifterLMS is worth every penny, especially with the Infinity Bundle pricing. The reason I like premium pricing is that it lets you invest in the developer, and I want you to grow with me over the next few years. The thing I want to mention is that your product is a very successful one. You are growing, there are more feature requests, and support demand is going up. I believe having a sole developer is not enough anymore. Another Thomas may be necessary so that Thomas can focus on core features and integrations. Things might get out of hand and that is what I wanted to say.

Chris Badgett: That is great feedback and I really appreciate it. It is one of the reasons we laid out the vision for the Infinity Bundle. We want customers to invest in the future at a discount from what it will eventually be, and we want to build a sustainable company that can grow the team. The 3.0 release was a business change that took some heat, and every decision we have made since is aimed at reaching the point where we can continue growing the team. It is a very good comment.

Why Support Is The First Hire, Not Another Developer

Thomas Levy: Faro is one hundred percent correct. It has probably been too much for one developer for a solid year. Right now my biggest bottleneck is support. The next hires we bring on will be support representatives, because I can do support but it is not my highest and greatest use. If we can hand more support to a specialist, I can spend more time developing. The other thing about hiring more developers is that as a client services agency, we have learned you cannot just put a junior developer on a project and expect it to go well. I need capacity to review code and work with new developers so we do not ship a Frankenstein product full of bugs.

Open Source Contributors And The LifterLMS Ecosystem

Thomas Levy: LifterLMS has been an open source project since 2014. Our code base is completely up on GitHub, and we have a small number of third-party contributors who have submitted code. If you look at projects like WooCommerce or Yoast SEO, they have hundreds of contributors doing small bug fixes and patches. That is one way we hope to grow too. It is also happening organically outside the core. Third-party developers are building LifterLMS themes and add-ons. Dennis just released a note-taking plugin that people have been asking us for since the beginning. It is not something we were going to focus on and build into the core, but Dennis went and built it, so now the community has it.

Why LifterLMS Is Not Bloated

Faro: LifterLMS is almost bloat free. It is divided into different parts, you can install the ones you need. Thomas, another point. The code is written one hundred percent by the team. You are not using BuddyPress or bbPress under the hood for Private Areas or the social learning add-on. You have written every bit of the code. That is really appreciated.

Chris Badgett: That is a big part of what some would call moving slow so we can move fast. We try really hard not to take shortcuts like bundling in other plugins. We do have an optional BuddyPress integration, but the goal is to build social learning components designed specifically for course creators and membership site owners, from the ground up. It will take longer, and it will be a better fit and less bloated than tying into something else.

Displaying Private Areas From Multiple Courses On One Page

Michael Wolf: I have now set up private areas for two different courses as a student. My question is about combining multiple private areas into one view. Would that be a use case for a membership?

Thomas Levy: Interesting idea. The shortcode you are using does not actually create a private area. It creates the information display about a private area. Head to the documentation and take a look at the shortcode reference. If you want to show two private areas on the same page, one per course, use the post ID parameter on the shortcode. Grab the post ID from the URL bar when you are editing the course. The URL has a post= parameter. Drop that into the shortcode. Put one shortcode per course on the page and each student sees the private area link for each course they are enrolled in. It shows a link into each private area, not a merged feed of all the private posts. Remember that private areas are unique to a student and to a course or membership.

The Private Area Info Widget For Course And Lesson Sidebars

Thomas Levy: If you just want to show the private area on your course sidebar, there is a much simpler path than the shortcode. Use the Private Area Info widget. Drop it into the course sidebar or lesson sidebar widget area, and it dynamically populates for the currently logged-in student based on the course or lesson they are viewing. On a lesson page, it walks up to the parent course. You do not need to look up a post ID and you do not need any parameters.

One caveat. If the student does not have any private posts assigned to them yet, the widget does not display anything. The private area only appears once there is at least one private post for that student in that course. So if you are testing the widget as an admin who is not enrolled, you will not see it. Log in as an enrolled test student and give them a private post, and it renders.

Renaming Private Areas To Match Your Niche

Chris Badgett: One thing Thomas was showing there. You could see he was calling it Office Hours. You can rename Private Areas to whatever you want. Coaches Corner, My Area, whatever. It is a general setting in Private Areas. You can rename what the posts inside are called too, so you do not have to use the term “private post” in the student’s interface if it does not fit the way you talk to your students.

The naming depends on your core subject matter. A music teacher might call it My Music Room or My Studio. A fitness coach might call it Training Area. A business coach might call it Coaches Corner. Whatever your students actually call the place where they and their teacher talk one-on-one, use it.

How To Build A Private Post Automation Step By Step

Thomas Levy: Let me walk through the automation screen. Automations let you create a series of post templates. Each one is a slimmed-down version of the private post creation screen. You do not select which student or which course it is associated with, because that gets filled in at the moment the automation fires. You just create the content and set the schedule.

Chris Badgett: Take the couch-to-marathon coaching example. You have a one hundred dollar course, and a one thousand dollar course-plus-coaching access plan on the same course. When someone enrolls through the coaching access plan, the LifterLMS 3.11 engagement trigger fires the automation. Post one goes out immediately with an intake assessment. The coach reads the intake and can then follow up with a customized training plan in a follow-up private post. The automation gives you the drip skeleton, and you fill in the personalized coaching around it.

Merge Codes And Publication Schedules For Automated Posts

Thomas Levy: Each post template has merge codes. First name and a few others are on the documentation page, and I am going to build in a quick-insert button in the next release so you do not have to look them up. Write your body content, drop in a merge code where you want the student’s first name to appear, and that renders per student when the post is created.

The publication schedule is the other half. You can say the first post publishes now, meaning the moment the automation fires. The second post publishes seven days after the automation begins, so it lands at the start of week two. You can add as many posts as you want with schedules set relative to the automation start. That gives you the one-on-one human experience in real time, without watching every new student registration by hand. And you can always add ad-hoc private posts on top of the automation for case-by-case coaching.

Import And Export Instead Of A Course Marketplace

Ali Mathis: An attendee asks whether other course creators have shown interest in a LifterLMS-based course marketplace where creators could opt in, list courses together, and LifterLMS could take a percentage.

Chris Badgett: We are aware of the idea. It could be built by a publisher-minded entrepreneur in the community. LifterLMS already has course import and export as a power-user feature, so passing courses between sites at a rudimentary level is possible. We do not have immediate plans to build a marketplace ourselves. If someone in the community wanted to try, my recommendation is to niche it down. A general “everything courses” marketplace is very hard to make work. A marketplace focused on entrepreneurship, or health, or relationships, or a sub-niche inside one of those, has a much better chance of the best courses rising to the top.

The Publisher Mindset For Course Creators

Chris Badgett: There are two types of course builders. There is the expert or the teacher, and there is the publisher. When I first started building courses in the organic gardening and permaculture niche, I partnered with other course builders to build the platform. I was taking on the publisher mindset. I had deals worked out with the various experts. You do not always have to be the expert to run an online course project. That is a legitimate business shape.

Running LifterLMS In A Language Other Than English

Thomas Levy: Translation is complicated but doable. LifterLMS is fully translation-ready. What is really cool about open source is that translators are actually doing the work for me. All I need to do is make sure I use the right functions in the code base. The community handles the rest.

WordPress provides GlotPress, which comes from Polyglots. If you go to the LifterLMS plugin page on wordpress.org and click the translation link, you will see all the languages we have translation files for. If a translation is ninety percent or more translated for your locale, WordPress downloads it automatically during plugin or core updates. Set your language in WordPress core settings and virtually every string in LifterLMS translates for you. We currently have eight to ten locales at ninety percent or higher, and another handful in the eighty-five percent range that are actively maintained.

Translating Your Own Widget Titles And Course Content

Thomas Levy: The catch is that automatic translation only covers hardcoded strings in the code base. Settings, options panels, and default widget labels all translate. But anything you save into your database yourself does not. If you add a widget and its title defaults to “Course Progress” before the translation is installed, that string translates. If you install the translation later, the widget title has already been saved to the database and needs to be translated by hand in the widget title field.

Same goes for your course content. Anything you type into the editor, lesson content, course titles, custom text on the front end, is your content and LifterLMS does not translate it. You translate that yourself in the editor. And LifterLMS does not translate strings from your other plugins either, so each third-party plugin needs its own translation files.

Two tools worth knowing. Poedit is a desktop program for editing a translation file. Download the LifterLMS core language file, translate the strings yourself, upload the result to the safe language directory on your server. Loco Translate is a plugin that lets you do the same work from inside the WordPress admin. It adds a little weight to your site so I prefer Poedit for a full translation, but Loco Translate is great for quick corrections.

Why Great Support Is Core To LifterLMS

Ali Mathis: A customer said Thomas did a great job on support this week, and it contributed to convincing her to purchase the Infinity Bundle.

Thomas Levy: We really try to make sure we treat all of our customers well. Our own company runs on WooCommerce and a bunch of extensions, and we submit support tickets to other premium WordPress plugin teams all the time. On the whole, most of the responses we get do not feel great. So we know how it feels from the other side.

Chris Badgett: Your success is our success. It is never fun when something is not working, and installing a new plugin in an ecosystem with lots of themes and other plugins is inherently variable. We fully expect people to have questions at every level. For some people LifterLMS is their first introduction to WordPress, and it takes some time. Go easy on yourself when you are learning. I have been in WordPress for almost a decade and I still find new features I did not know about.

Why System Reports Get Your Support Ticket Answered Faster

Michael Wolf: I have another question. I was able to incorporate the shortcode into a shortcode widget and display the private area. But when I use the shortcode directly in the course sidebar, it displays as shortcode text rather than rendering. Could my shortcode menu widget be conflicting with the course sidebar or the lesson sidebar?

Thomas Levy: Not all themes render shortcodes inside widget areas by default. That is likely what is going on. Try the Private Area Info widget directly and see if that renders on its own. If it does, the workaround you already found, putting the LifterLMS shortcode inside a third-party shortcode-widget plugin, is a fine option too. If you can open a support ticket and attach the WordPress System Report, I can see your environment, your theme, and your other plugins, and reproduce the issue on my end.

Submitting a System Report might feel like an extra step, but it really helps me spot known issues and recreate your environment before I try to reproduce the problem. LifterLMS runs across thousands of themes and thousands of plugins. I try hard to weed out issues in advance, but I cannot test every combination. A System Report is the fastest way to bridge that gap.

Chris Badgett: Please do not feel sorry for opening tickets. That is what the support system is there for. Every ticket also helps us improve the product. If a question feels dumb to you, the software is probably doing something that is making it feel dumb. That is signal we act on.