How to Create and Award Certificates in LifterLMS

A LifterLMS certificate involves three separate things: a template you design, an engagement that decides who earns it and when, and the awarded copy each student receives. Most certificate problems come from mixing those three up.

This tutorial builds all three in order, then covers the parts people usually discover late: what the student can actually do with a certificate, what changes when you edit a template after awards have gone out, and how far "verification" goes without extra work.

Everything here is in the free core plugin except PDF files, which need the PDFs add-on.

Where certificates live in the admin

The top-level Engagements menu holds every screen you need:

• Certificates lists your certificate templates.
• Awarded Certificates lists every certificate a student holds, with the student and the template it came from.
• Engagements lists the rules that hand templates out.

An awarded certificate is a copy made at the moment of the award, with the merge codes already replaced by that student's details. It does not keep reading from the template afterward. Keep that in mind for the section on syncing below.

Step 1: design the certificate template

1. Go to Engagements > Certificates and choose Add Certificate Template. The block editor opens with a default layout you can adapt.
2. Give the template a name in the editor's title field. That name is an internal label for you, separate from the title printed on the certificate.
3. Open the Settings panel in the editor sidebar and fill in the options described below.
4. Build the layout with ordinary blocks: headings, paragraphs, columns, images for a logo or signature.
5. Publish the template. A draft template cannot be awarded.

The certificate settings panel

Setting	What it controls
Title	The title carried by every certificate generated from this template. It is what the student sees. While the design contains a Certificate Title block you edit the title in that block, and this field only appears if you remove the block.
Size	A3, A4, A5, Letter, Legal, Ledger, a site-wide user-defined size, or a custom width and height in inches or millimeters.
Orientation	Portrait or Landscape.
Inner Margins	Top, right, bottom and left spacing between the page edge and your content, entered as percentages. Use it to keep text clear of a decorative border.
Background Color	A flat color behind the design.
Next Sequential ID	The number the next certificate from this template receives when you use the sequential ID merge code.

The size used for new templates comes from Default Size under LifterLMS > Settings > Engagements, in the Certificate Settings group. Letter is the default, so change it once if your learners print on A4. The same screen stores the user-defined width, height and unit.

Background image

The background is the template's featured image, which the editor labels Background Image. Upload artwork with the same proportions as the size and orientation you chose, because the image is scaled to the full page. A template with no image of its own falls back to the Placeholder Background Image set under LifterLMS > Settings > Engagements.

The heading on a new template is a Certificate Title block. Its text becomes the certificate's title, and it offers a short list of display fonts, script and gothic styles among them, alongside your theme's fonts. Print one copy before you commit to a decorative font. What looks right on screen can be thin on paper.

Step 2: add merge codes

Merge codes are placeholders that LifterLMS replaces when the certificate is awarded. Place the cursor in a text block, open Merge Codes from the block toolbar, and choose Insert next to the code you want. You can also type a code by hand.

Merge code	Replaced with
{first_name}, {last_name}	The student's first and last name
{student_name}	The student's display name
{email_address}, {user_login}, {student_id}	Email, username and user ID
{earned_date}	The date the certificate was awarded
{current_date}	The date the content was generated
{certificate_id}	The unique ID of this awarded certificate
{sequential_id}	A running number per template, padded to six digits
{site_title}, {site_url}	Your site name and the address of your Student Dashboard page

Three practical notes:

• Prefer {first_name} {last_name} over the display name for the line that names the student. Display names are often nicknames. Ask for real names at registration if the certificate matters.
• Use {earned_date} for the award date. {current_date} is filled in again if you later sync the certificate, so it can drift.
• There is no merge code for the course title. If the certificate should name the course, type the name into the design and keep one template per course.

Step 3: create the engagement that awards it

1. Go to Engagements > Add Engagement and give it a clear title such as "Certificate: Food Safety Level 1".
2. Under Triggering Event, choose the event that earns the certificate. "Student completes a course" is the usual choice. Completing a course track suits a larger credential, and "Student passes a quiz" suits a final exam.
3. Pick the specific course, track or quiz in the field that appears. If you leave it blank, the engagement applies to all of them, which is rarely right when the course name is typed into the design.
4. Set Engagement Type to "Award a Certificate" and select your template.
5. Leave Engagement Delay at 0 to award immediately, or enter a number of days to wait.
6. Publish the engagement.

If completion alone is too easy a bar, tighten the course itself: require a passing grade on the final quiz so the course cannot be completed without it. Our guide to quizzes in LifterLMS covers that setting, and the article on engagements and automated emails explains every trigger.

Things to know before you rely on it:

• A student earns a given template once for a given course, quiz or track. Repeating the event does not create duplicates.
• Engagements are not retroactive. Students who finished before the engagement was published get nothing automatically.
• The built-in "Certificate Earned" notification is an on-site popup, not an email. If you want an email, add a second engagement with the same trigger and the type "Send an Email".

Award a certificate manually

Manual awards cover the students an engagement missed, offline training, and one-off recognition.

1. Go to Engagements > Awarded Certificates and choose Award Certificate.
2. Pick the student and the template, then create the draft.
3. Review the draft in the editor. The merge codes are already filled in, and you can edit the text for this one student.
4. Publish it to award it, or schedule it for a later date.

You can start the same process from the Award button in a published template's editor sidebar, or from a student's Certificates tab under LifterLMS > Reporting > Students.

What the student sees

Awarded certificates appear on the Student Dashboard, in a preview on the landing tab and in full under My Certificates. Opening one shows the certificate with a small toolbar:

• Print opens the browser's print dialog. The page is sized to match the template, so remind students to print at actual size and to turn on background graphics if the background is missing.
• Download in core saves the certificate as an HTML file, not a PDF.
• Enable sharing makes the certificate viewable by anyone who has its link. Once it is on, Copy Shareable Link appears, and Disable sharing turns it off again.

Sharing is off by default. Until the student enables it, only that student and site staff can open the certificate.

PDF files

If students or their employers expect a PDF, you need the LifterLMS PDFs add-on. It turns the certificate download into a PDF that uses the size set on the certificate, and it has its own settings under LifterLMS > Settings > Integrations. If your images are served from a CDN, check its image proxy setting, or backgrounds and logos can be missing from the file.

Change a template after certificates were awarded

Because awarded certificates are copies, fixing a typo in the template does not fix the certificates already issued. To push changes out, go to Engagements > Certificates, hover over the template, and choose Sync Awarded Certificates. LifterLMS then regenerates each awarded copy from the current template: title, content, background image, size, orientation and margins. Large batches run in the background.

Two cautions. A sync overwrites any edits made to individual awarded certificates, and it refills {current_date}. Open one certificate after the sync to confirm the result before you tell students anything changed.

Verification: what core gives you

Core does not include a public lookup page where a third party types in a certificate number. What you have is:

• The share link, which lives on your domain and shows the certificate as issued. Awarded certificate addresses end in a random string, so they cannot be guessed from one another.
• {certificate_id} or {sequential_id} printed on the certificate, which staff can match against Engagements > Awarded Certificates when someone asks.

For most training businesses that is enough. A searchable verification page, a QR code on the certificate, or expiry and renewal rules are custom work. The official certificate documentation is worth reading alongside this tutorial.

What to do next

Create a test student, complete the course as that student, and check the result on screen and on paper: name, date, margins, background. Then decide whether smaller milestones deserve recognition too. Achievements are the lighter tool for that.

Professional help is worth it when the certificate has to do more than core allows: pulling the course name, hours or a license number into the design, a public verification page, expiring credentials, or certificates that match strict brand rules. That is LifterLMS customization and, for the data-driven parts, custom plugin development. Tell us what your certificate needs to prove and we will say what it takes.