LifterLMS Instructors: Adding Multiple Instructors to a Course

Plenty of courses have more than one teacher: a co-taught programme, a guest expert for one module, a lead trainer with an assistant who marks quizzes. LifterLMS supports multiple instructors per course and per membership in core, with no add-on, and gives you some control over how each person is presented.

This guide explains how LifterLMS instructors work in practice: how to add them, what the order and labels mean, what each co-instructor can edit and see, how notifications are routed, and what LifterLMS does and does not do when it comes to paying instructors.

It assumes you know the roles themselves. If not, read our breakdown of LifterLMS user roles first; the short version is that course staff should be Instructors or Instructor's Assistants, not Administrators.

How LifterLMS instructors are attached to a course

Every course and membership has an instructors list. Each entry stores three things:

• Instructor: the WordPress user. Only users with the Administrator, LMS Manager, Instructor or Instructor's Assistant role can be chosen.
• Label: the title shown next to their name on the course page. The default is "Author". Change it to "Lead instructor", "Guest expert", "Teaching assistant" or whatever describes the role.
• Visibility: Visible or Hidden. Hidden instructors keep their permissions but are not displayed on the front end.

The first person in the list is the Primary Instructor. LifterLMS sets the course's WordPress author to that person, which matters for notifications and for any theme or plugin that shows "the author".

If you never touch the list, it contains one entry: whoever created the course.

Add multiple instructors step by step

1. Make sure each person has the right role under Users: Instructor for people who build and own content, Instructor's Assistant for helpers.
2. Open the course in the editor.
3. In the block editor, open the course settings sidebar and find the Instructors panel. In the classic editor, open the Instructors tab of the Course Options box and click Add Instructor.
4. Search for and select the user.
5. Set the Label and Visibility.
6. Drag the entries to set the order. Put the person who should be the Primary Instructor first.
7. Save or update the course.

Memberships have the same instructors list. That is useful when a membership is run by a team and you want each team member's name on the membership page.

The LifterLMS documentation on adding multiple instructors to a course shows the same process with screenshots.

Showing instructors on the course page

How instructors appear depends on how your course pages are built:

• Block-based course pages use the Instructors block, which lists every visible instructor with their label. The separate Course Author block shows a single author with an optional biography.
• Shortcodes: [lifterlms_course_instructors] on a course and [lifterlms_membership_instructors] on a membership output the same list. Use them in page builders or custom layouts.
• Theme templates: LifterLMS template output skips hidden instructors in the same way.

Names and avatars come from each user's WordPress profile, and the biography from the profile's biographical info field. Ask every instructor to fill in a short bio and upload a photo, or the instructor section will look unfinished. Hidden visibility is the right choice for internal reviewers, assistants who mark work, or an administrator added only so they appear in notifications.

What co-instructors can edit and see

Being on the list is what grants access. LifterLMS checks the instructors list whenever an Instructor or Instructor's Assistant tries to edit a course, lesson, section, quiz, question or membership, so every listed instructor can work on the course even if someone else created it.

Listed as	Edit course content	Create or delete lessons and quizzes	Publish	See the course's students and progress	See sales
Instructor	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Instructor's Assistant	Yes	No	No	Yes	No
LMS Manager or Administrator	Yes, on every course	Yes	Yes	Yes, all students	Yes

A few consequences to plan for:

• Co-instructors see each other's students in that course. Being an instructor on a course makes its students "theirs" for reporting. Usually that is the point; if not, give the guest a lesson to review instead of a place on the list.
• Removing someone from the list removes their access to that course immediately, without touching their account.
• Instructors cannot enroll students by default, even on their own course. Enrollment is done by an LMS Manager, an Administrator, or the student through an access plan.
• Instructors can preview every course while Unrestricted Preview Access on the General settings tab includes their role. That is not editing rights, but it does mean they can view other instructors' content.

Notifications with more than one instructor

Several LifterLMS notifications can email the course author. Course Complete sends one to the course author by default; Enrollment, Lesson Complete, Section Complete and Quiz Passed offer the course author as an optional recipient that you switch on. The course author here means the Primary Instructor only, not everyone on the list.

If co-instructors need those emails, open the notification under LifterLMS > Settings > Notifications and add them as custom recipients, or use a shared team inbox as the Primary Instructor's email. For automated emails beyond these defaults, see LifterLMS engagements and automated emails.

Paying instructors: what LifterLMS does and does not do

LifterLMS core has no commission or revenue-sharing feature. There is no setting to give an instructor a percentage of course sales, no instructor earnings screen, and, as noted above, instructors cannot see sales reports. Payment to instructors is something you organise yourself. The common approaches:

1. Flat fee or salary. Simplest for in-house trainers and co-taught programmes. Nothing to configure.
2. Manual revenue share. Each month an LMS Manager or Administrator checks sales per course in LifterLMS reporting or exports orders, calculates each instructor's share and pays them outside WordPress. Fine for a handful of instructors.
3. Automated commission tracking. Record each instructor's share as payments arrive, with a custom plugin or a third-party marketplace tool. Needed once you have many instructors or want them to see their own earnings.

A custom approach can start from the lifterlms_transaction_status_succeeded action, which fires whenever a payment succeeds. This sketch credits an equal share of a commission rate to each visible instructor on the purchased course or membership:

<?php
/**
 * Plugin Name: LLMSX Instructor Commission Ledger
 */

add_action( 'lifterlms_transaction_status_succeeded', 'llmsx_record_instructor_commission' );
function llmsx_record_instructor_commission( $txn ) {

	$order = $txn->get_order();
	if ( ! $order ) {
		return;
	}

	$product = llms_get_post( $order->get( 'product_id' ) );
	if ( ! $product instanceof LLMS_Interface_Post_Instructors ) {
		return;
	}

	$instructors = $product->get_instructors( true ); // Visible instructors only.
	$amount      = (float) $txn->get( 'amount' );
	if ( ! $instructors || $amount <= 0 ) {
		return;
	}

	$rate  = 0.30; // 30% of each payment shared between instructors.
	$share = round( ( $amount * $rate ) / count( $instructors ), 2 );

	foreach ( $instructors as $instructor ) {
		$owed = (float) get_user_meta( $instructor['id'], 'llmsx_commission_owed', true );
		update_user_meta( $instructor['id'], 'llmsx_commission_owed', $owed + $share );
	}

	$order->add_note( sprintf( 'Instructor commission recorded: %1$s each for %2$d instructor(s).', $share, count( $instructors ) ) );
}

Treat it as a starting point, not a finished system. A real commission ledger needs to handle refunds, store individual entries rather than a running total, use per-instructor rates, and give instructors a screen to see their balance. If you are planning a site where outside teachers sell their own courses, read our guide to building a multi-instructor course marketplace with LifterLMS before you start.

Common mistakes

• Giving co-instructors the Administrator role so they can edit the course. Add them to the instructors list instead.
• Getting the order wrong. The first instructor becomes the author and receives author notifications.
• Empty profiles. A list of names with default avatars undermines the course page.
• Forgetting to remove a guest after their module is finished, leaving them with editing access and visibility of your students.
• Promising instructors a dashboard of their earnings before checking that you will build or buy one.

Frequently asked questions

How many instructors can a LifterLMS course have?

The instructors list has no fixed limit in core. In practice, a short list with clear labels reads better on the course page.

Can an instructor be hidden from the course page?

Yes. Set their Visibility to Hidden. They keep editing and reporting access but are not displayed.

Do all instructors get notified when a student completes the course?

No. Author notifications go to the Primary Instructor, the first person in the list. Add others as custom recipients on the notification.

Does LifterLMS split payments between instructors automatically?

No. Core has no revenue-sharing feature. You pay instructors manually or build or buy a commission system.

What to do next

Set roles first, add each instructor to the list with a clear label, put the lead instructor at the top, and log in as each of them to check what they can see. Then decide how notifications and payments will work before the first sale, not after.

If you need instructor earnings, approval workflows for instructor-created courses, or reporting each instructor can see for themselves, our LifterLMS plugin development team builds those features as clean, update-safe plugins. Talk to us about your instructor setup.