An issuer is the organization a certificate is awarded on behalf of. One site can hold several: departments of a college, partner schools on a shared platform, franchise locations, or a training company and the clients it certifies for. Each issuer has its own members, its own templates, its own public profile, and its own verification branding, and every certificate records which issuer awarded it.

Creating an Issuer

Navigate to Certificates > Issuers and click Add New. Only site administrators can create issuers. The form has these fields:

• Name (up to 200 characters): names the issuer on its public profile and program pages and in the credential directory, and is recorded as the issuer of record on certificates from its templates.
• Slug: the last part of the public profile address. It fills in from the name until you edit it, and the form shows the resulting address as you type. Lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens; each issuer needs its own.
• Description (up to 2,000 characters): shown under the name on the public profile, and used as the page description search engines display.
• Logo: shown at the top of the public profile page. The verification page uses the separate verification logo in the branding section below it.
• Website: a full URL, linked from the public profile.

Below the details are two more sections: Verification branding (see Organization-Branded Verification) and Members (see Issuer Members and Roles). Click Create Issuer. From then on the Issuers list shows each issuer’s name, slug, member count, template count, and status.

Issuer Templates and Site Templates

A template belongs either to one issuer or to the site itself. Site templates behave exactly as they did before School: anyone who can award certificates can use them, and their certificates carry no issuer. Issuer templates are managed and awarded by that issuer’s members, and their certificates carry the issuer. Assigning happens on the designer’s Organization tab; see Assigning Templates to Issuers.

The Issuer of Record

When a certificate is awarded from an issuer template, the issuer is stamped on it permanently. If the template is later moved to a different issuer, certificates already awarded keep the original. The issuer of record appears on the verification page (“Issued by”), on the program page, and in the credential directory.

Archiving an Issuer

Issuers are archived, never deleted, because certificates reference them forever. Click Archive on the Issuers list. An archived issuer disappears from pickers and public listings (its profile and program pages return a not-found page), and it cannot receive templates. Its existing certificates keep working and still verify, showing the issuer’s name and branding as before. You can still open and edit an archived issuer from the list.