Introducing the Certificate Premium Add-Ons

When we launched the PressPrimer Certificate plugin in August (can you believe it’s only been one month?), we delivered a comprehensive free plugin that covered the entire certificate lifecycle: design a certificate, award it automatically, deliver it, and verify it. The reception has been extremely positive, and in about six weeks, it’s already in use on hundreds of WordPress sites.

Today we’re releasing version 2.0 of the free plugin, and alongside it, three premium add-ons: Educator, School, and Enterprise. The free plugin gets even better, and the new extensions offer advanced features to help organizations run better certification programs.

Here’s what’s in each new plugin, starting with the free update.

PressPrimer Certificate 2.0

The free 2.0 release is a big update, including several big improvements requested by our users. Here are a few improvements:

• The Certificates page in /wp-admin/ gains additional filters and search. It’s now a lot easier to find specific certificates for users.
• There’s a new Certificate Link block and shortcode. Drop it onto a course, lesson, topic, or quiz page, and it will output a link to the associated certificate once the user earns it (nothing shows until the certificate is earned).
• New Geometric starter templates join the mix, and they’re available in portrait and layout orientations for Letter and A4.
• The verification page for certificates gains a Download PDF button for valid and expired certificates, so there’s easy certificate access now without an account.
• WebP and AVIF images now render in certificate PDF files and previews.
• You can send yourself test emails from the certificate designers to see how emails will render when certificates are awarded.

Then behind the scenes, we made it a lot easier for developers to extend the Certificate plugin. A lot of that was driven by requests from one of our partners for their work on a new integration; stay tuned for an announcement on that in the next few weeks!

Educator

The Certificate Educator plugin is the first tier in our premium certificate suite. It’s designed for course creators and training companies where the certificate is a key part of their product. Here’s some of what Educator includes:

• Bulk awarding of certificates. Pick users from a list or upload a CSV file, map its columns to your fields, and preview everything before certificates go out.

• Custom font support lets you upload your own TTF fonts and use them in your certificates.
• Multi-page certificates allow the creation of certificates of up to 10 pages in the designer. Users receive a single PDF file when a multi-page certificate is awarded.
• Social sharing gives recipients a Share button on their certificate pages. Choose which platforms to support, and there’s native support for LinkedIn’s add-to-profile form.
• Expiry reminder emails go out before a credential lapses, on a schedule you set.
• Verification page branding lets you customize the verification page based on your organization’s standards.

School

The second tier in the PressPrimer Certificate plugin suite is the School plugin. It adds features for organizations with several departments or classes. Here’s what’s included in the first release:

• Issuing organizations get their own branding, URL, members, and templates. Add people as owners or issuers so they can award certificates without site admin access, and link certificate templates to the organization that issued them.
• Public program pages offer more details about organizations and what credentials mean, offering a certificate sample and live count of how many people have earned it.
• The Credential Directory lets visitors see who has earned certificates, with staff able to override who gets listed.
• The Award Past Completions tool is for bulk awarding certificates to users based on activity before the certificate was available. In other words, if you create a new certificate linked to course completion, the plugin can scan for previous completions and award the certificates retroactively.

• The Email Copies settings in the certificate designer allow you to CC and BCC any email address when certificates are awarded, plus there are settings to include LearnDash Group Leaders and PressPrimer Teachers.

Enterprise

The Enterprise plugin is the top tier of the Certificate suite and includes features for larger organizations to satisfy compliance departments. Here’s what’s included in 2.0:

• The Audit Log is a filterable record of who did what and when across the entire certificate suite. Choose which categories to track and then everything goes in the log.
• The Verification API offers a key-authenticated endpoint that returns details related to certificate verification. It’s a read-only system that allows you to generate API keys and control usage. We included a no-code version as an embeddable widget that you can add to any site you white-list and it will verify credentials from remote sites.

• White-label branding allows overrides of the plugin name, menu item in /wp-admin/, email footers, PDF metadata, and more.

One more thing: All Access

With Certificate joining Quiz and Assignment as comprehensive assessment suites for WordPress, we’re offering a new one to get everything we offer. The new All Access Pass includes all of our plugins at the Enterprise tier, so all nine premium add-ons under one license key and one renewal. We’re offering special launch pricing until October 31, and if you’re one of our early customers who already purchased Enterprise licenses for both Quiz and Assignment, you can upgrade to All Access directly from your license page for only $1.

Getting started

If you’re new to PressPrimer Certificate, start with the free plugin. The setup tour will take you from your first template to an awarded certificate in five minutes. Add Educator, School, or Enterprise as your programs grow.

Let us know in the comments how you’re using the new 2.0 features!