Creating a Custom Course Login Page

By: Justin Ferriman • October 11, 2018
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Here is an easy way to customize the login page for your courses so that it matches your brand and provides a seamless experience.

Out of the box LearnDash and WordPress allows for large variety of functionality to help you create an online course experience that is ideal for your learners. However, one of the ares that WordPress seems to fall short is in the ability to customize the login screen.

In the video above we will go over some tools that you can use to quickly (and easily) customize the login page with your branding. Also, the video outlines a neat trick for redirecting users to a specific page (i.e. their profile) as soon as they are logged-in.

Setting up the profile page.

The first thing you will need to do is to create an account/profile page. This is done by adding the following LearnDash shortcode:

[ld_profile]

This will present the user with all the information related to the courses they have access to, including progress, performance, obtained points, previous quiz answers, and certificates.

If you are also using WooCommerce to sell courses then you can use their shortcodes to display a user’s purchases on this page. That shortcode is as follows:

[woocommerce_my_account]

That’s it! You have a profile page ready to go.

Design your login form.

For this step you just need to install two free plugins:

  1. Custom Login Page Customizer
  2. Peter’s Login Redirect

Use the first plugin to customize the branding of your login form. The video goes over one possible example but as you can see there are an endless number of combinations. This free plugin really gives you the opportunity to create a pleasant login experience that doesn’t feel so much like “WordPress”.

The second plugin is one option for redirecting users when they log into your site. The idea here is to redirect them directly to the profile page that you made previously using the LearnDash and WooCommerce shortcodes. This will show users exactly the courses they have access to and the purchase history (from WooCommerce).

You can also create a redirect for users when they log out of your site. For instance, you can send them to a promotion or a news page.

Get creative, but not too creative.

Just a word to the wise: don’t get too creative with your login form. It’s not ideal for your users to get confused when accessing the material. Keep it simple but don’t be afraid to really make the forms match your overall brand to create a cohesive experience for users as they access their accounts.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter