Requirements and compatibility

Review this before installing. Two of these requirements decide whether the plugin can work at all.

Platform

The POM theme is not optional

POM LMS renders its course and lesson pages with its own templates, but everything around them — the page framework, the subheader, the progress bar, the accordion outline, the login form, the video player and the permission rules — comes from the POM theme.

On another theme the course pages will not render as intended. Confirm the theme first, before concluding that anything else is wrong.

Permission rules come from the theme

The Global permission rule you select on a course is defined in the theme's own options, not in POM LMS. A site with no rules defined there will show an empty rule selector.

Rules can require:

• a role, or the absence of one;
• the purchase of all, any or none of a set of products;
• a purchase made on, before or after a given date, or within a number of days, weeks, months or years;
• an active subscription based on a set of products, with a status and a start-date condition.

Define the rules you need before building courses that depend on them. See Permission-based access.

WooCommerce, when you sell or track courses

WooCommerce is required for:

• paid courses, because access is decided by a purchase;
• subscription-based rules, which additionally need the subscriptions extension;
• the My courses area, which is an endpoint inside the WooCommerce account.

A site running only free, login-gated courses does not need WooCommerce — but it also has no student account area, so students reach their courses from links you provide.

Permalinks

Courses and lessons publish at their own URLs, using slugs you can change. After activating the plugin, after changing a slug, and after enabling the nested URL structure, re-save the permalink settings if course or lesson URLs return a not-found error.

Decide the URL structure before publishing, because changing it later changes every course and lesson address. See Course URL structure.

What is not included

Plan around these before committing to POM LMS for a project:

• no quizzes, assignments, grading or certificates;
• no cohorts, enrollment windows or drip release;
• no emails, of any kind;
• no built-in course archive page;
• no student reporting beyond completion percentages.

Test accounts

You will need at least three, and it is worth creating them now:

1. An administrator — for building.
2. A student with access — a subscriber-level account that satisfies the course's rule.
3. A student without access — the same, but not satisfying it.

An administrator's view proves nothing about what a student sees.

Pre-install decision

Proceed when all of these are true:

• the POM theme is active;
• an administrator can manage the settings and the license;
• you know whether courses will be sold, and WooCommerce is ready if so;
• the permission rules you need exist in the theme options, or you know you will create them;
• you have decided the course URL structure;
• you have test accounts for at least two kinds of student.

Then follow Install and activate POM LMS.