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Are you missing the Add-Ons page under LearnDash LMS in your WordPress site? You’ve probably seen tutorials referencing it as an easy way to install LearnDash add-ons and official LearnDash plugins.
If your LearnDash LMS > Add-Ons page is now showing up, here are a few reasons why it might be missing, and some things you can try to get it back.
Active License Required
Before we get into reasons why Add-Ons might not be showing up, you should first know that LearnDash add-ons are only available to active license holders. You must either have an active license to LearnDash Cloud, or an active license for the LearnDash plugin.
You can check that your license is active by navigating to account.learndash.com and clicking on the Licenses tab. You’ll see both:
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- Expiry: [the date your license expires]
- Status: Active (if it doesn’t say “Active,” you need to buy a new license)
1. Development/Staging Site?
If you’re on a development or staging site, LearnDash’s licensing server might not be able to connect to your server. Sometimes a hosting company will host staging sites on a different server, or use server rules to block them from public access.
It could also be an issue if you’re using a local development tool like Local, or any other type of local site on your computer only.
2. Active License Key
As mentioned above, double-check that your license key is valid & active.
- Navigate to LearnDash LMS > Settings > LMS License (tab)
Check that your email address & license key are correct. These were emailed to you after your purchase, and can be found when logging into account.learndash.com.
3. LearnDash Licensing & Management Plugin
In version 4.3.0.2, LearnDash released new functionality to manage license keys. It was originally called the LearnDash Hub, and had its own top-level menu in the left sidebar. In version 4.3.1, LearnDash Hub was removed and they moved license key management back to LearnDash LMS > Settings > LMS License. This is where it still lives today.
This new LearnDash Licensing & Management plugin should have automatically been installed when you updated to LearnDash 4.3.0.2. If you don’t have it on your site, I recommend you add it. It should make managing your license key easier, and come with fewer issues. There’s also a handy visibility option I’ll explain in a minute.
You can download the plugin from account.learndash.com, on the Add-Ons tab.
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4. Licensing & Add-Ons Visibility
With the LearnDash Licensing & Management plugin active, there’s a new option to control which users can access your license key & the add-ons page. By default, all Administrators have access, but you can add & remove individual users.
- Navigate to LearnDash LMS > Settings > Advanced
- Click on License Visibility
- Click the Remove link next to a user to remove their access
- Search in the box for a user and click the Add button to grant access
So if a user isn’t seeing the Add-Ons menu in the admin area, it could be that their access was removed with this tool. Simply add them back in.
Watch a video on the new features of the LearnDash Licensing & Management plugin.
5. Security Plugins
Another issue I’ve seen is WordPress security plugins blocking access to the LearnDash licensing server. WP Cerber is a specific plugin I’ve seen issues with, but it could happen with any of them. It’s also possible that your hosting company has a strict security setup.
If you’re using a security plugin, disable the plugin and try again. If that doesn’t work, you can reach out to the plugin’s support team and ask for help allowing LearnDash to communicate with your site.
If your hosting company might be the culprit, they should be able to quickly tell you if their security measures are blocking the LearnDash API calls, and start allowing them.
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6. Contact LearnDash Support
If all of this fails, simply contact LearnDash support. They should be able to get you sorted.
If you had a specific issue that we didn’t list in this article, or a specific plugin/host that caused a problem, we’d love to hear about it in the comments. We’ll update this post to better help future readers diagnose and fix their LearnDash licensing & add-on issues. Thanks!
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Sebastian
Thanks a lot for this article! I just came across your YT video and I watch it because I thought it was relevant to the Design Upgrade Pro plugin. I was pleasantly surprised, as thanks to it I discovered that LearnDash didn’t show up the new updates in my site. I will never discovered it without your help (or perhaps I will realize after a few months without updates…). I just needed to manually update LearnDash Licensing & Management and now updates work again.
Such bad miscommunication from LearnDash. It’s natural that they can introduce some bug in a new update, but if it messes with consequent updates they should at least send an email so everybody knows about it and can fix it. Not even a blog post!
Dave Warfel
I agree that the communication was poor around the release of their new licensing system. The last few updates to the LearnDash plugin were actually all surrounding the licensing. They changed the name… they changed the menu location… they updated some bugs. They could have done a better job, for sure.
I’m glad my video helped you 🙂