General settings
How the settings screen works: where it is, who can reach it, and how changes take effect.
Opening it
Settings → POM LMS in the WordPress administration.
It sits under Settings rather than in its own top-level menu, so it does not compete with Courses in the sidebar. Courses and lessons are edited from Courses; this screen is configuration.
Who can change settings
Three roles can open the screen and save changes:
- Administrator
- Editor
- Shop manager
Everyone else — including Author and Contributor — cannot. Shop manager is included because on a course-selling site the person running the shop is often the person configuring the account area.
That list is not editable from the interface.
Who can edit courses
A separate question with a different answer. Editing courses and lessons follows normal WordPress post capabilities, so an editor can create and publish courses without touching settings.
Two consequences worth planning for:
- Anyone who can edit a course can change who gets access to it, since the access fields are part of the course editor.
- Anyone who can edit a lesson can mark it a preview, publishing it to the world.
Give course editing to people you trust with access decisions.
The four sections
| Section | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Course | How course pages look |
| Lesson | How lesson pages look |
| Account | The My courses area and the completion mode |
| License | The product license for this site |
Each section holds one or two groups of fields, with a Save action.
Saving
Changes take effect immediately on the front end. There is no publish step and no draft state for settings.
If your site uses page caching, cached pages keep the old appearance until they expire or the cache is purged. Purge after a visible change, and check in a private window rather than the tab you were just working in.
Some fields depend on others
Fields grey out or disappear when they are irrelevant — the featured image position only matters if the featured image is shown; the overlay colors only matter if an overlay is enabled.
If a field you expected is missing, the setting it depends on is off.
Defaults
Every field ships with a default, so a fresh installation renders sensibly before you touch anything.
Clearing a text field returns it to its default rather than emptying it, which is why some messages reappear after you delete them. To suppress a message, replace it with your own text.
The License section
The license section belongs to the plugin and covers this site's license and its subscription status. If the license is missing or invalid, an administration notice says so.
See License and domain activation.
After changing settings, check the front end
The settings screen shows you fields, not results. After any change:
- Open a course in a private window.
- Open a lesson.
- Open My courses as a test student.
Three pages, thirty seconds, and it catches the change that looked right in the form and wrong on the site.