How to Set Up LifterLMS: A Step-by-Step Guide

LifterLMS installs in a couple of minutes. A working school, where a stranger can find a course, pay for it, log in, and finish a lesson, takes a few more deliberate steps.

This guide walks through those steps in order: requirements, installation, the setup wizard, the core pages, your first course, an access plan, a payment gateway, and a proper test as a student. Screen and button names follow the plugin and its documentation as of October 2026.

Work on a staging copy or a fresh site if you can. Nothing here is destructive, but checkout is easier to test when real visitors are not watching.

Before you start

You need a self-hosted WordPress site and an administrator account. LifterLMS runs on any host that runs a current WordPress, but two version lists are worth reading:

• The plugin's WordPress.org listing sets the floor. At the time of writing it asks for WordPress 5.9 and PHP 7.4 or later.
• The LifterLMS system requirements page recommends considerably newer versions: WordPress 6.7, PHP 8.3, and MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 at the time of writing. Treat the recommended versions as your real target.

Confirm three things with your host as well:

• HTTPS is active on the whole site. You will be handling logins and payments.
• Page caching can skip dynamic pages. The same requirements page warns that a host caching dynamic pages such as the Student Dashboard will stop the site from working correctly.
• Email gets delivered. Receipts and enrollment emails are sent by your own site, so connect an email delivery service if your host's mail is unreliable.

Install and activate the plugin

1. In the WordPress admin, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin.
2. Search for "LifterLMS".
3. Click Install Now, then Activate.

The core plugin is free and needs no license key. If you manage sites from the command line, the WP-CLI equivalent is:

wp plugin install lifterlms --activate

After activation you will find five new items in the admin menu: LifterLMS, Courses, Memberships, Engagements, and Orders.

Run the setup wizard

On first activation LifterLMS sends you straight to its setup wizard. If you closed it, recent versions add a Launch Setup Wizard link on the Plugins screen.

Step	What it does	What to choose
Welcome!	Introduces the wizard	Continue
Page Setup	Creates the essential pages if they do not already exist	Save and continue. This is the one step you should not skip
Payments	Sets the default country and currency and offers an Enable Offline Payments checkbox	Pick your selling currency. Enable offline payments only if you will accept bank transfers or checks
Coupon	Asks permission to share usage data in return for a coupon	Your call. Either answer lets you continue
Finish	Links to learning resources and offers sample courses or templates to import	Import a sample course if you want a finished example to study

The Payments step does not connect a card processor. It only reminds you to install a payment gateway for online payments, which we cover further down.

Check the core pages

The wizard creates four pages. They are ordinary WordPress pages that LifterLMS has been told to use for a specific job.

Page title	Job	Assigned in LifterLMS > Settings
Course Catalog	Lists your published courses	Courses tab
Membership Catalog	Lists your memberships	Memberships tab
Purchase	The Checkout page, built from the checkout shortcode or the Checkout block	Checkout tab
Dashboard	The Student Dashboard: courses, grades, certificates, account details, and order history	Accounts tab

Purchase and Dashboard are only the default page titles. LifterLMS, its documentation, and the rest of this guide call them the Checkout page and the Student Dashboard.

Open each page on the front end, then add the Course Catalog and the Student Dashboard to your navigation menu so people can find them. If you ever replace one of these pages with your own design, reassign it in the matching settings tab or LifterLMS will keep pointing at the old one.

Build your first course

Create the course

1. Go to Courses > Add Course.
2. Enter a title, write a short description, and set a featured image.
3. Save the draft, then click Launch Course Builder.

Add sections and lessons

1. Click Add New Section and name it. Sections are the chapters of your course.
2. With the section open, click Add New Lesson and name it. Repeat until the outline is complete.
3. Drag sections and lessons to reorder them.
4. Open a lesson's settings to add content. A new lesson can be written directly in the builder, or you can switch to the WordPress editor when you want full block layouts.
5. Paste a Video Embed URL if the lesson has a video, and switch on Free Lesson for anything you want to offer as an open preview.
6. Click Save changes.

The lesson settings also hold Prerequisite and Drip Method. Leave both alone on a first build and add them once the course works from start to finish.

Add a quiz

1. On a lesson, choose Add a quiz, then Create New Quiz.
2. Click Add Question and pick a type. The core plugin offers Multiple Choice, Picture Choice, and True or False.
3. Mark the correct answers and set the points for each question.
4. In the quiz settings, set a Passing Percentage and, if you want them, Limit Attempts and Time Limit.
5. Back on the lesson, turn on Require Passing Grade on Quiz if students must pass before the lesson counts as complete.
6. Save your changes, then click Exit to return to the course editor.

Look through the Course Options box for restrictions such as an enrollment period or a capacity limit, then publish the course. The LifterLMS course builder documentation covers the remaining controls.

Create an access plan

A published course with no access plan gives visitors no way to enroll. Access plans define the price and the terms of access.

1. Edit the course and scroll to the Access Plans box below the editor.
2. Click Add New Plan. A dialog asks what type of plan you want, with templates that include Free, One Time, Lifetime, Monthly, Annual, Paid Trial, and Pre-sale. Advanced shows every setting.
3. Fill in the Plan Title and, for paid plans, the Price. Review Access Expiration: lifetime, a fixed length of time, or a set date.
4. Leave Plan Availability on Anyone unless the plan is for members only.
5. Save the access plans, then update the course.

A course can carry up to six plans by default, so you can offer a one-time price next to a subscription. For a first run, add a Free plan too. It lets you test enrollment before any gateway exists; remove it before launch. Our guide to memberships and access plans covers the pricing models in depth.

Connect a payment gateway

Gateways are managed under LifterLMS > Settings > Checkout. What appears there depends on what you have installed.

• Manual is the only gateway in the free core. Checkout creates a pending order and shows the buyer your payment instructions, and the student is enrolled once you record the payment on the order. It suits invoices and bank transfers, not self-service card sales.
• Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.Net are paid add-ons, sold individually or inside the LifterLMS bundles. The LifterLMS pricing page shows the current options.
• WooCommerce can run the checkout instead, through a separate integration add-on.

To connect a paid gateway, using Stripe as the example:

1. Go to LifterLMS > Add-ons & more, open My License Keys, and add the key from your LifterLMS account.
2. Install and activate the gateway add-on from the same screen.
3. Return to Settings > Checkout and open the Stripe section. Connect your Stripe account and enable test mode first.
4. Confirm the webhook status shown in the settings, as described in the Stripe add-on guide.
5. Check that the currency on the Checkout tab is the one you intend to charge in, then save.

PayPal, coupons, refunds, and failed renewals are covered in our tutorial on how to sell courses with LifterLMS.

Test as a student

By default, administrators, LMS Managers, and instructors bypass enrollment, drip, and prerequisite restrictions, so your own view of the course proves very little.

1. On a course or lesson, use the View as menu in the admin bar to switch between Visitor and Student. It is a quick check of what each audience sees.
2. Then do it for real. The preview documentation itself recommends a test user for a true student experience, so register a test student through checkout in a private browser window.
3. Buy the course with the gateway in test mode and confirm you land where you expect afterward.
4. In the admin, check that the order appears under Orders and that the student shows up under LifterLMS > Reporting.
5. As the student, complete a lesson, fail the quiz on purpose, then pass it.
6. Check the inbox. Are receipts and enrollment emails arriving, and from the right sender?
7. Log out and open a lesson URL and the Student Dashboard directly. You should see a restriction message or a login form, never the content. Repeat with caching switched on.

Go live and plan what comes next

Before you announce anything:

• Switch the gateway from test to live mode and run one small real transaction.
• Remove test access plans and test users.
• Exclude the Checkout page and the Student Dashboard from page caching, and make sure the cache skips logged-in users. Our article on speeding up a LifterLMS site explains what is safe to cache.
• Set your terms and privacy pages under LifterLMS > Settings > Accounts.
• Make sure backups run daily and include the database.

With one course selling, the natural next steps are certificates and other engagements, memberships, and a catalog that hangs together as a school. Our framework for building a professional online academy picks up from here.

A basic setup does not need a developer. Help pays off when the build stops being basic: moving students and their progress from another platform, connecting a CRM, changing how checkout or the dashboard behaves, or tracking down a conflict with your theme or cache. That is the work our LifterLMS support and LifterLMS development services cover, and you can tell us about your project whenever you are ready.