Introducing PressPrimer Certificate

We’re excited to announce that PressPrimer Certificate is now available on WordPress.org! It’s our new certificate design, awarding, and verification plugin, and it joins PressPrimer Quiz and PressPrimer Assignment as our third suite of assessment plugins for WordPress.

Why a certificate plugin?

Most WordPress LMS plugins include some kind of certificate support, but they all tend to share the same problems. The builders are awkward to use, you have to build your own templates, and output quality is inconsistent. The bigger problem is what happens after certificates are awarded. With most WordPress solutions, there’s no way to verify what was earned, students can edit their certificates, and their are no controls for expiring or revoking certificates.

PressPrimer Certificate fills the gap with an complete certificate workflow solution, from a powerful designer to verification tools and full control over awarded certificates. Better yet, it integrates with our other plugins and popular WordPress LMS platforms like LifterLMS, Tutor LMS, LearnDash, and LearnPress.

A designer that just works

Our goal with our certificate designer was simple: a new user should be able to go from installing the plugin to awarding a certificate in less than ten minutes.

That starts with our template system. When you create a new certificate design, you can choose from six starter templates (available in A4 and letter sizes) or use your own design. From there, everything is true drag-and-drop. What you see on the screen is rendered exactly the same way in the PDF output, down to 1% accuracy.

The designer includes:

• Text, images, logos, signatures, shapes, and background elements
• Merge fields that pull in dynamic data, like the user’s name, quiz score, course title, expiry date, etc.
• A QR code element that links to each certificate’s unique verification page
• Snap-to-grid, rulers, and undo/redo features
• Six bundled open-license fonts

Merge fields show realistic sample data right inside the builder, so you can design with what looks like real data instead of placeholder tokens. The system can also pull custom records from user meta, quiz meta, and course meta.

Integrations built into the design

Linking certificates to user activity is built right into the designer. This helps to ensure what we make the right merge fields available, and the free 1.0 release includes native integrations for these plugins:

• PressPrimer Quiz
• PressPrimer Assignment
• Tutor LMS
• LearnDash
• LifterLMS
• LearnPress

Each integration is only shown when we detect that it’s active, and you can of course also use the plugin with none of the integrations. Certificates can be awarded automatically or manually for any WordPress user, with options to backdate the earned entry or override the expiry.

Every certificate can be verified

Each certificate that PressPrimer Certificate generates gets a unique credential ID. The QR code on the certificate links to a public verification page on your site, where anyone can confirm whether it’s valid, as well as the recipient name, status, and date. Certificates can have validity periods, and staff can revoke and reinstate certificates as needed. The verification page is always authoritative; it shows the certificates right status right now, not just what existed on the day it was awarded.

Certificates are also locked the moment they’re awarded. We take a snapshot of the layout and data, so editing a template later never changes certificates that have already been sent.

Print-quality PDFs, delivered by email

Every certificate is generated as a 300 PDF PDF file on your own server. No third-party service ever touches your certificate data. When a certificate is awarded, the recipient automatically gets an email with their PDF attached. Files are read-only and cannot be modified in Acrobat or other tools, so unlike many certificates from LMS plugins, students can’t go in and change the name or date on what’s been published.

Students can also look up their certificates whenever they want on your site. We include a block and shortcode that list a user’s certificates with the status, earned date, expiry, verification URL, and a link to the PDF file.

A complete certificate solution

There’s a lot more in 1.0 than just the features above, including:

• An admin dashboard with key stats, an activity chart, and lists of recent certificates and templates
• A guided setup tour that helps you build and issue your first certificate in minutes
• Template duplication, plus filters and search support
• A way to resent certificate emails or delete certificates
• Personal data export and erase support
• Full translation readiness

What’s next

PressPrimer Certificate 1.0 is just the starting point. We’re already planning on what’s next for the free release as well as some premium add-ons that will offer options like social sharing, custom fonts, expiry reminder emails, printing service integrations, and more.

To get started with PressPrimer Certificate, just visit Plugins > Add New in /wp-admin/ and search for “PressPrimer Certificate”. Documentation is live in our Knowledge Base, and you can reach out to our team if you have questions or feedback.

We hope your learners love earning these certificates as much as we enjoyed building this new plugin!