This article walks through earning a certificate from the recipient’s side, from the moment it is issued to sharing it with an employer.

Receiving the Certificate

When a certificate is issued, whether by a trigger or manually, the recipient receives an email with the certificate PDF attached. The email includes the certificate title, the credential ID, and a verification link, and it can name the exact course or quiz that was completed. (The email can be customized or disabled; see Email Notifications.)

What It Is Called

Each certificate carries its own name, and that name is what the recipient sees everywhere: the email subject, their My Certificates list, the certificate’s page, and the verification page they share with an employer. When a template awards for many courses, each certificate can be named after the course behind it, so a learner holding five of them can tell them apart at a glance. See Awarding Certificates Automatically.

The Certificate Page

Every certificate has its own shareable page on your site at /certificate/CREDENTIAL-ID/. The page presents the certificate with a Download PDF button, so a recipient who lost the email can always retrieve their certificate from the link. Because the URL contains the non-guessable credential ID, the page is private in practice: only someone the recipient shared the link with can find it.

Revoked certificates no longer offer a download.

My Certificates

The My Certificates list shows a signed-in user everything they have earned on your site. Add it to any page with the My Certificates block or the [ppcert_my_certificates] shortcode. For each certificate, the list shows its name, status, earned date, and expiry date, with links to view, verify, and download. Users can filter the list to valid or expired certificates and sort it, and long lists paginate.

Visitors who are not signed in see a login prompt instead of the list.

The PDF

The certificate PDF is rendered at print quality and matches the designer canvas exactly. The QR code and the credential ID on it are clickable, so a recipient or an employer can open the verification page straight from the PDF. The file is protected against editing: Acrobat and similar tools refuse to modify the text, so a recipient cannot casually retype the name or date. Printing and copying text remain available, so the certificate stays useful for framing and for pasting a credential ID into a form.

Sharing and Getting Verified

Recipients have two links worth sharing:

• The certificate page link, which shows the certificate itself with its download.
• The verification link (also reachable by scanning the QR code on a printed certificate, or clicking the QR code or credential ID in the PDF), which shows the authoritative status of the credential.

For job applications and audits, the verification link is the one that matters: it proves the credential is genuine, current, and issued by you.