LearnDash 3.0 is here!

You may have heard rumors about LearnDash 3.0, a big update coming to WordPress’ most popular LMS plugin. Well, they’re not rumors. It’s true, LearnDash is working on version 3.0.

🎉 May 28, 2019 – LD3 Released 🎉
LearnDash 3.0 is here. Read the official release post, or watch Justin’s video below.

Congrats to Christine McElroy for guessing the exact date! She’ll be receiving a free year of Design Upgrade Pro for LearnDash, as well as 1 hour of consulting time or CSS wizardry.

If you haven’t checked out their new documentation yet, there’s a ton of great info.

• Feature checklist
• Read the annotated timeline (reverse chronological order)

LearnDash 3.0: What We Know About Features

You can assume that I’ve included everything that I could confirm up to this point.

✅ 3.0 will include “one particular feature that will make courses on LearnDash stand out from any other course platform out there!”
✅ Native login/registration 🎉
✅ Completely revamped lesson assignments interface (see January 31 below)
✅ “Sections” to more easily organize your lessons (see April 12 below)
✅ Changes to both the front-end & back-end
✅ An improved front-end design (see April 3 below), with some color options (see April 25 below)
✅ Success messages will have a much-improved design (April 25 below)
✅ Easier template customization (but maintain support for existing method)
✅ New features based on emerging trends in elearning (🤷‍♂️ not sure what this means, but it’s a quote from Justin, the CEO)

❌ Quiz import/export
❌ Additional quiz types
❌ Quiz question tags
❌ Category hierarchy

These have been discussed, but are too vague to put in the definitive “yes” or “no” camp:

🤔 Easier for devs to create custom quiz types

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May 9, 2019 – Release Candidate Coming Soon

LearnDash just posted in their Facebook group that they are now accepting applications for those who want to test the Release Candidate for LearnDash 3.0.

They’re asking people to answer a few questions about their LearnDash set up, and not everyone is guaranteed to be accepted, but this is a sign that 3.0 is getting close.

April 25, 2019 – Success Messages

Another teaser was released today, this time of the success messages coming to LD 3.0. It’s a solid improvement over what we currently have.

A few folks expressed a desire to be able to change the colors. It was confirmed that we’ll have control over at least some of the colors for the new design in LD3.

And I have to include this hilarious (joking) response from active group member, Patrick:

April 12, 2019 – Section Headings

A little teaser of the new section headings coming to LD3. These will allow you to group your lessons (and associated topics) into sections.

Justin also confirmed that category hierarchy and tags for quiz questions won’t be included, stating that LearnDash 3.0 is:

…UX/UI driven … We do plan on getting more granular with specific feature components afterwards.

April 3, 2019 – Front-end Design

We got another #LD3 teaser today in the LearnDash Facebook Group. A sneak peek at what will be a new front-end design that comes with LearnDash 3.0.

This has not been officially confirmed, but we believe that this will be opt-in, meaning all existing sites will continue to see the current front-end design, as not to mess with any customizations you may have done. But you’ll have the option to upgrade to this new look in LD3.

January 31, 2019 – Assignments

We’ve got more #LD3 #Secrets today in the LearnDash Facebook Group. A beautiful new interface is coming for lesson assignments. Have a look:

January 10, 2019 – Login/Registration

Justin, CEO of LearnDash, dropped a little preview of the new login/registration feature that will be part of LearnDash 3.0. Who’s excited?! 🙋‍♂️

January 8, 2019

Christine asked:

Will LearnDash 3.0 have a quiz import/export feature (Excel)?

Looks like we’ll still need to rely on third-party plugins for quiz import/export. As always, speak up to LearnDash directly if this is important to you. The more requests they get for certain features, the more likely they are to get developed.

November 2018

On November 12, LearnDash released version 2.6.0. At the end of the announcement post, they also provided an update on the progress of version 3.0.

1. It will be released in “early 2019.” We still don’t know if this means January 2019 or March/April, but it should be here before the summer.
2. Front-end and back-end improvements will be made
3. LearnDash is working with two talented WordPress companies to help with the 3.0 release: 10up & 3.7 DESIGNS

🙌 Working with 10up

This might not sound like much, but it’s one of the most exciting pieces of news I’ve heard from LearnDash in over a year.

10up is probably one of the top 10 WordPress development companies in the world. They employ some of the biggest names in WordPress, like Jake Goldman, Helen Hou-Sandi & Taylor Lovett, to name a few, and have over 100 employees on 3 continents.

• They donate some of their employee’s time to the open source WordPress project
• They are one of a very select few to earn WordPress.com VIP partner status
• They’ve worked with Microsoft, Google, TechCrunch and other high-profile companies
• 41 of their employees have contributed to WordPress, and they employ 2 of the 18 people in the world who can commit code changes to the official WordPress project

🎨 Working with 3.7 DESIGNS

I don’t know much about these guys, but I’m still very pleased that LearnDash has brought in another partner to help out with the front-end design. 3.7 DESIGNS worked with the University of Michigan on a custom LearnDash implementation, so they know a thing or two about LearnDash.

August 2018

Another user in the LearnDash Facebook group posted his opinion on LearnDash’s current design, and was met with this response from Justin:

You’ll be happy to know we have brought in a very talented designer who is mocking up new designs for LearnDash 3.0.

Justin Ferriman

The overall design of LearnDash is one of its biggest downsides (that’s why I created a plugin to improve it). While I’m happy to see they are making design a priority, I’m a little concerned that they’re still “mocking up” new designs in August. If they haven’t started implementing a new design into the 3.0 codebase, I’m curious how many design changes will be included when the new version is released.

Hopefully this is just semantics and they’re further ahead than I think.

One final comment by Justin on the same thread, in response to my request for more information about what specifically is changing with the LearnDash design:

We intend to change the way templates are customized (make it easier) but maintain legacy for some time so that custom work done to previous templates isn’t impacted.

May 2018

While we still don’t know what this new feature might be, we do know that they are still actively working on LearnDash 3.0. In a GDPR-related announcement in May 2018, Justin again reiterated:

While we have a few concurrent projects at present, the most important include:

– Preparing LearnDash to be “Gutenberg ready”
– Working on LearnDash 3.0

This simply confirms LearnDash 3.0 is still in development, but unfortunately doesn’t give us any more specifics.

March 2018

Nothing new in terms of features, but Justin chimed in on the LearnDash LMS Tips & Tricks Facebook Group to confirm a 2018 release date. Now slated for “early 2019.”

February 2018

Back on February 14, 2018, LearnDash released 3 new enhancements to it’s LMS platform. In the announcement post, CEO of LearnDash, Justin Ferriman, said:

This is going to be a big year, least of which because we are working on LearnDash 3.0 – but more on that later!

Justin Ferriman, LearnDash CEO

Little details were shared about what LearnDash 3.0 will entail, but he wrapped up the announcement with this:

The idea with these updates and the eventual 3.0 release is to refine and polish what we do best, but also will have one particular feature that will make courses on LearnDash stand out from any other course platform out there!

“Refine & polish what we do best” sounds pretty typical for a new version of any software, but he left us guessing as to the one particular feature that will make courses stand out from any other platform out there. Any ideas?

January 2018

A user in the LearnDash LMS Tips & Tricks Facebook group was looking for help with her certificates. Among the responses was one by Justin, CEO of LearnDash, in which he said:

LD 3.0 will have UI improvements for the certificate.

This was the first reference to LearnDash 3.0 in 2018… before LearnDash even teased it on their own blog.

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Giveaway Contest

Update: May 9, 2019: Today, LearnDash opened an application process for those who want to test the Release Candidate for version 3.0. Because this signals that 3.0 is getting very close, I have decided to close submissions for our “guess the release date” contest. Those who were to guess now have a clear advantage over those whom have already posted a guess.