Rooster LMS

FAQ

How can I see it in action?

On Rooster LMS → Home, choose “Add the demo course”. It creates a short course with every question type (each as plain form fields and as an interactive H5P version), an interactive lesson, a one-question-at-a-time quiz and a survey, in your site’s language. Nothing is created until you ask, and “Remove the demo course” deletes everything it made. On the command line: wp rooster-lms demo install and wp rooster-lms demo remove.

Can I use it for a single school or company?

Yes. Organisations are optional: without any, Rooster LMS is a complete LMS for one school, company or course creator, with courses, quizzes, exams, certificates and reports. Add organisations whenever you start training others.

Can an organisation have hotels, departments or classes, each with its own manager?

Yes. Each organisation is a tree of units with levels you name (Group, Hotel, Department; School, Grade, Class; or your own), built in its Structure tab or from a template (Rooster LMS Pro: hotel group, school, university, company). A manager, instructor or reporter of a unit sees only that unit and the ones below it, in the same manager portal. Units can have seat pools, and staff sheets place people at their units and give unit roles. An organisation that never chooses its levels keeps “Organisation” and “Location”, as before.

What are offerings and cohorts?

An offering is one run of a course for a cohort or a part of an organisation, such as this year’s class. A repeated year starts a new attempt in a new offering while the earlier one, with its results and certificate, stays in the history; a closed offering stays readable for its learners (“Ended, read only”). A cohort is a course intake (one course and its class period) or a programme cohort (a class that follows a study programme over several courses and years).

Is it multilingual?

Yes. With WPML or Polylang, each translation of a course, lesson or quiz shares one course, one enrolment, one progress record, one certificate and one report. The names of organisations, their units and levels, job roles, audiences, live sessions and course sections, and the organisation branding, are translated in WPML String Translation or Polylang’s strings. E-mails, certificates and organisation branding follow each learner’s language.

What does Rooster LMS Pro add, and what does it cost?

SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004 and cmi5 packages with a built-in player, SCORM to cmi5 conversion, an xAPI learning record store and engagement reports; selling course parts and single live or recorded lessons, plans as products with WooCommerce Subscriptions, organisation sign-up through admission flows, revenue reports, Zoom attendance import, and scheduled and automatic invitations. Try it free for 14 days with AI credits included, then from $99 per year for one site, $199 for up to 10 sites or $399 for unlimited sites. See Rooster LMS Pro

Does it need another LMS?

No. Rooster LMS is a complete LMS on its own.

What happens to my data if I delete the plugin?

Nothing: deleting the plugin keeps its tables and settings, so a reinstall finds everything. Data removal is opt-in: to remove every Rooster LMS table, option, post and scheduled action when the plugin is deleted, tick “Delete all Rooster LMS data when the plugin is deleted” under Rooster LMS > Settings first, or set the option with WP-CLI:

wp option patch update rooster_lms_settings delete_data_on_uninstall 1

Courses, lessons and categories that an import adopted from another LMS are given back to that LMS (their original post types and taxonomy) before the data is removed, never deleted; users who only had the Rooster learner, organisation staff or LMS editor role get the site’s default role.

Does it send e-mails?

Only the ones you switch on in Rooster LMS > Notifications, the notification centre: every e-mail to learners and to staff has its own switch, its text in each language (WPML or Polylang String Translation), its timing and a “Send a test” button. The e-mails to members are off by default; reminders and changes of booked live lessons are on, and each learner can switch them off. E-mails are queued and sent in the background, in each recipient’s language. Importers never send any.

Can I remind people before a live lesson?

Yes. The site has two reminders (a day and an hour before); add any number of your own in the notification centre, in a course’s “Reminders” box or on a live lesson’s page, to learners or to trainers, before, after or at a time of day, and switch inherited ones off for one course. A moved lesson’s reminders follow the new time, and nobody gets the same reminder twice.

Can I sell courses?

Yes, with WooCommerce (a plugin on your own site; Rooster LMS calls no outside service for selling). Set the course’s enrolment to “Purchase”, then in its Sell box create a product or link an existing one (a simple or variable product, or one variation), with access for a number of days or without end. WooCommerce keeps prices, taxes, payments, invoices and stock; Rooster LMS gives the course when the order is Processing or Completed, ends it on a full refund or when the order is cancelled or fails after payment, and keeps the learner’s progress. A course with a capacity keeps its products’ stock equal to the places left. Buyers need an account; an order placed without one is attached only to an account that proved the e-mail address. Rooster LMS > Sales lists what each order line gave. Selling sections (instalments) or single live or recorded lessons, and plans with WooCommerce Subscriptions, need Rooster LMS Pro.

What are plans?

A plan is what an organisation or a person gets when they get more than one course. An organisation plan sets the organisation’s seats, adds a catalogue of courses and an access template, and runs for a term (account opening); an individual plan gives a person a set of courses and categories for a term. Assign them under Rooster LMS > Plans and in an organisation’s Plan tab. Managers get reminders 30, 7 and 1 days before the end; after a grace period (14 days by default) the plan’s courses are suspended, with progress and certificates kept, and renewing restores them. The plans grid block, shortcode and Elementor widget show the plans as price cards under the heading “Subscription plans” (editable), with a Contact or Learn more button; Apply (organisation sign-up with review) and Subscribe (checkout) need Rooster LMS Pro.

Can I run live, in-class and hybrid courses?

Yes. A live lesson is a lesson with a date: on Zoom, a meeting link, an embedded live stream, or in a room at a venue (Google Meet and Microsoft Teams meetings created for you: Rooster LMS Pro). Meetings an existing eRoom installation holds move into Rooster with the optional, one-way eRoom importer (Rooster LMS > Import), keeping their Zoom, Meet or Teams meetings; eRoom’s shortcodes keep working through Rooster once eRoom is deactivated. A course is its series: “Add next lesson” adds the next date with the same settings. The lesson page shows the countdown before, Join or the stream during (with the materials the trainer shares live), and the recording and every material after. Recordings are protected files on your server or links. A course has a delivery mode (self-paced, live online, in person, hybrid), a venue and a capacity; the course page shows “When and where” with a map link, and the catalogue filters by format, month and city.

How does attendance work?

Under Rooster LMS > Live sessions > Attendance, open a lesson’s roster and mark each learner present, late, absent or excused, or show a QR code that learners scan to check in (from 30 minutes before the start to 30 minutes after the end; late after 10 minutes). At in-person events, staff scan the attendees’ tickets at the door on their phones (guests without an account count too), and a class QR projected in the room opens the lesson and its materials on learners’ phones and marks them present. Rosters export to CSV, and organisation managers see their members’ rosters in the portal’s Sessions tab. With “Attendance is required to complete a live lesson” on, attending completes the lesson. Importing attendance from Zoom’s participant report needs Rooster LMS Pro.

Can I invite people to a live lesson and see who comes?

Yes. On the live lesson’s page (or the course’s “Invitations and RSVP” box), make an invitation, add people from the earlier learners, an organisation, a part of it (a hotel, a department), a cohort, a list of the Newsletter plugin (on your own site) or a CSV file, check, and send. Each person gets personal “Yes, I will be there” / “No, I cannot attend” buttons; opening the link never answers by itself, so mail scanners cannot answer for anyone, and the answer page shows no name. You see the answers, export them as CSV, and a “yes” can offer an account, enrol the person or put them in a cohort (an answer set by staff never makes anyone a member of an organisation). Each invitation shows its funnel: invited, accepted, then attended, enrolled or joined, with the rates. Invitations respect consent, the weekly limit and the one-click unsubscribe.

Can I tell earlier learners about a new lesson? Is it consent-based?

Yes. “Tell earlier learners” (on the course and on a live lesson’s page) e-mails the learners of the earlier lessons and linked courses, only those who agreed, once per person and lesson, at most a few offer e-mails a week (2 by default), each in their own language. Consent comes from an unticked checkbox at the checkout or on the registration form, or the learner’s switch in Account > Notifications. Every e-mail has a one-click unsubscribe (also the List-Unsubscribe header of mail apps) that needs no login. A “soft opt-in for buyers” setting exists, off by default: turn it on only after legal advice. People who said no stay out, even after their data is erased.

Can visitors register on the front end?

Yes. Rooster LMS > Registration creates a registration page with the Registration form block (also a shortcode and an Elementor widget), and can send WordPress’s own registration links there. Each form chooses its fields (name, e-mail, password or a link to set it, phone, organisation, job role), the privacy and terms consent and the e-mail confirmation: the account is created only when the visitor confirms. A hidden field and a rate limit stop bots, and a captcha plugin can hook in. WordPress’s “Anyone can register” setting opens or closes the form. With Rooster LMS Pro, visitors choose a registration type (an admission flow) or sign up an organisation for a plan.

Can I move from Amelia?

Yes, for live classes sold as Amelia events. Rooster LMS does not need or use Amelia; this optional importer only reads an existing Amelia installation once. Rooster LMS > Import shows “Amelia events were found”: choose how events become courses (monthly events as one series course, instalments as sections), preview, import, then replace Amelia’s shortcodes in your pages with the “next lesson of the series” block. Zoom meetings are kept, approved bookings open what was booked, and new accounts get no e-mail until their first message from your site. The import can be undone. Selling a single monthly lesson or an instalment afterwards needs Rooster LMS Pro.

Can I build automations on Rooster LMS events?

Yes, with Rooster One (Pro). Rooster LMS’s own notifications, reminders, invitations and RSVP work without it. For multi-step automations on Rooster LMS events (enrolled, lesson or course completed, quiz failed, inactive learner, certificate issued, cohort starts, RSVP yes or no):

1. Install and activate Rooster One, then start its Pro plan, which runs its workflow engine.
2. In Rooster One, open Workflows and create a workflow with a Rooster LMS trigger, such as “Course completed”, “Quiz failed” or “RSVP yes”.
3. Add its steps: waits, e-mails, web push, coupons, A/B tests or Rooster LMS actions such as enrol or invite.

The Rooster LMS triggers appear with Rooster One’s Rooster LMS bridge, coming in a Rooster One release; Rooster LMS already sends the events and never calls Rooster One. The Home page’s “What else you can add” card shows these steps. Developers can listen to the same events: see the developer notes, “S1n: notifications, reminders, events”.

How do I import from MasterStudy LMS?

Back up the database and the uploads folder first. Deactivate MasterStudy LMS and its add-ons, activate Rooster LMS (and Rooster LMS Pro for SCORM packages), then open Rooster LMS > Import and press Migrate everything from MasterStudy. The screen shows what will come over, asks once, and migrates everything in the background with a progress bar, then links to the full report. Courses and lessons keep their IDs, addresses, images, comments and translations, and the newest migration can be undone under “History and undo”.

With WP-CLI:

wp rooster-lms import start --source=masterstudy --until-done

Who can edit the courses?

Administrators, and users with the “Rooster LMS editor” role: they edit every course, lesson, quiz and certificate template (descriptions included), upload media and manage the course and lesson categories and tags, without the plugin settings, organisations, people or any other site administration. Course instructors edit the courses they teach. Rooster LMS Pro lets LMS editors also rename the sections of SCORM packages.

Who sees which courses?

Catalogue settings (Rooster LMS > Settings):

• Private catalogue: visitors who are not logged in see no course titles anywhere: course grids, archives, search, feeds, sitemaps, comment lists and the REST API. Category names and links stay visible, without counts. A direct link to a public or link-only course still opens.
• Organisation catalogues: off by default, an organisation-only course is listed only to the learners it is assigned to; any member of the organisation can still open it. On, members see every course of their organisation’s catalogue in lists.
• Learners’ course lists: off by default. On, logged-in learners see only their own courses (the ones they are enrolled in, and with organisation catalogues their catalogue) in course grids, category counts, search and feeds; visitors who are not logged in still see every public course, and administrators, course editors and the managers and instructors of organisations see the full list. Course pages open as before. The MasterStudy importer turns it on when LMS Registration Manager’s course visibility was on.

What the visibility rule cannot cover: code that lists posts with get_posts() (which skips WordPress’s query filters by default) or with direct SQL, search plugins that answer from their own index (such as Relevanssi, SearchWP or ElasticPress), and background tasks (WP-Cron, WP-CLI, Action Scheduler), where no visitor exists. Sitemaps list public courses only. A site can exempt a query of its own, or include a background one, with the rooster_lms_listing_guard_applies filter.

What personal data does Rooster LMS store?

Rooster LMS stores learning records in its own database tables, keyed by user ID: organisation memberships, course assignments, enrolments, course and lesson progress, quiz attempts (the answers given, essay texts included, the scores and verdicts, and the feedback and user ID of whoever graded an essay), interactive content results and saved states (H5P: scores, completion and the answers in progress), the regrade and re-evaluation history, certificates, course staff roles, the notification history and an event log. It never sends learning records to an external service (External services lists what is sent, and when). Certificate codes and question identifiers are generated on the site.

For organisations, the plugin also stores each member’s job role, unit (location), staff status and “active until” date; the roles a member holds over units of the organisation (manager, instructor or reporter, their days, who gave them and when they ended); the offerings (runs of a course) each learner took part in, with the course’s cycle and the joining and leaving dates; the programme cohorts a learner belongs or belonged to, with the dates; and, after a MasterStudy import, an archive of records that could not be attached to a course (kept so nothing is lost; the site owner deletes it when it is no longer needed). Staff spreadsheets are read from the upload and never stored; a large import keeps its rows only until its background run ends. Export download links carry a signed token that expires after ten minutes. Organisation logos are ordinary media attachments.

Timed exams: for quizzes shown one question at a time, the plugin stores when each question was shown and answered and the response time of every answer (measured on the server), and whether the question timed out. Results withheld until the end of an exam window are stored at once; the personal-data export of such an attempt leaves out its score, result and verdicts until they are released to the learner.

Extra time (accommodations): a learner’s time factor (for example +50 % or no time limit) is stored with the person. It can reveal a disability (special-category data), so it is set by the organisation’s managers or a site administrator without any reason, shown only to them, never sent to xAPI or any other service, and included in the export and erased with the person.

Feedback questionnaires: responses are stored with the learner’s user ID, so each learner answers once and the export and erasure tools cover them. Forms are confidential by default: managers and administrators see only combined results of groups of at least five people (feedback_min_group) and comments without names. On an attributed form, which the learner is told about, the managers of the learner’s organisation see who answered what. Cohorts store which learners belong to which intake, with the course assignment.

Selling, live lessons and e-mails: what each paid order line gave (order and offer IDs, state, access end; prices stay in WooCommerce), plan assignments, attendance marks, the notification log (which e-mail was queued or sent to which user ID, when, for which courses, opened or clicked when tracking is on; never the text or the address), each person’s consent to offer e-mails with every change and its source, the phone and the time the privacy and terms boxes were ticked on the registration form, and invitations with their answers and outcomes (whether the person then attended, enrolled or joined a cohort, and when; a guest’s address and name only until erased). A registration waiting for its e-mail confirmation is deleted after 48 hours. When a person who said no to offer e-mails is erased or deleted, a one-way hash of the address is kept, with its source and date, so they are never e-mailed offers again (GDPR art. 17(3)(b) and 21(3)); the suggested privacy policy text says so. The export and erasure tools cover these records; the eraser reports that hash as kept.

Anyone who has a certificate’s code can verify it. The verification shows only the fields chosen under Rooster LMS > Settings (by default the learner’s display name, the course title and the completion date) and whether the certificate is valid, revoked or expired, never an e-mail address. The printable certificate is shown only to its owner, site administrators and the managers of the learner’s organisation.

Personal data tools: the plugin registers exporters with Tools > Export Personal Data (one group per kind of record: organisation memberships, roles in organisation units, offerings, cohort memberships, course assignments, enrolments, progress, lesson progress, quiz attempts with answers, verdicts and feedback, feedback responses, certificates, invitations with their answers and outcomes, notifications, learning events, course staff, imported records and language) and an eraser with Tools > Erase Personal Data, which ends the user’s memberships, unit roles and course access and deletes every Rooster LMS record of that user ID, offerings and cohort memberships included; invitation answers and outcomes stay only as anonymous counts. The account itself is left to WordPress. Suggested privacy policy text is added under Settings > Privacy.

When a user account is deleted, its records are deleted from every Rooster LMS table: at once for up to two seconds, the rest by a background clean-up. When a user is removed from a site of a network, that site’s records are deleted after a short delay, unless the user was added back in the meantime. Rooster LMS > Privacy, wp rooster-lms users status and wp rooster-lms users clean show and remove the records of accounts deleted while the plugin was inactive.

What stays: the user IDs recorded as the actor of a change (who assigned a course, who graded an essay, who saved a question version, who started an import) are kept after that account is deleted, as IDs of an account that no longer exists, without a name or e-mail address.

Can I fix a quiz after learners have answered it?

Yes, at any time. Fixing the wording of a question, an option, an explanation or a translation never creates a new version and never changes a result; reviews show the corrected wording. Changing the correct answers, the points, the set of options or the question’s type creates a new version: earlier answers keep their grades and their reviews show the question exactly as the learner saw it. The editor says before saving which questions will get a new version and how many learners answered them; Rooster LMS > Question versions lists every version. Regrade the earlier answers when you are ready (Rooster LMS > Regrade): conversions that lose nothing (single to multiple choice, a short answer to a one-gap question, true/false to single choice with the same two options) are regraded, the others keep their grades unless you award them full points. A change of the pass mark, the quiz mode or the completion rule applies to new attempts; Rooster LMS > Re-evaluate previews and applies it to earlier ones, and only ever upgrades: nobody loses a pass or a completion, and certificates already issued stay as they are.

Why is a course or a lesson locked?

A locked course lists everything a learner must complete first, at any depth: its prerequisites, their prerequisites and so on, each course once and in the order to take them, with the learner’s status, the rule (completed, or at least a percentage) and a “Start here” mark on the next course they can start. A locked lesson says what opens it: the previous lesson or quiz (and whether the quiz must be passed), a number of days after enrolment, or a date, shown in the site’s time zone. Course pages, the course outline, a lesson opened directly, My courses and the course cards all show this. Courses the learner cannot see are never named: they read “a course you don’t have access to yet”. Guests are asked to log in. If prerequisites require each other (a cycle), learners see the course as unavailable and Tools > Site Health lists the cycle for administrators.

Can learners cheat in a timed exam?

Rooster LMS makes it hard. Timers run on the server, so reloading the page, a second tab or a changed device clock never restarts a question. With one question at a time, later questions never reach the browser before their turn. Questions and options can be shuffled per attempt, and results can be withheld until the exam window closes for the whole class, so a learner who finishes early cannot pass the answers on. Late answers are refused and recorded as timed out. What no web LMS can prevent: screenshots, a second device used to look things up, or someone sitting next to the learner.

Does it work with Elementor?

Yes, and Elementor stays optional. When Elementor is active, a “Rooster LMS” widget category offers a widget for every Rooster LMS block plus a course field, a course search and account links; they render the same server code as the blocks. The MasterStudy importer converts the MasterStudy widgets it finds on pages, Elementor templates and headers or footers: each becomes a Rooster LMS widget, a core Elementor widget, or an invisible note where nothing matches. The preview lists the counts per widget type first, and undo restores each page exactly.

Why do Rooster LMS pages use the full width?

Course, lesson, quiz, catalogue, category, My courses, certificate and portal pages span the width of the theme’s header. On block themes the templates use the theme’s wide size; on the MasterStudy starter theme the pages use the theme’s own container; other classic themes get a container of their own, which the rooster_lms_classic_wrapper filter can replace. Settings > Appearance can cap the width.

Are lesson recordings and materials protected?

Yes. Recordings a trainer uploads to a live lesson, and files added from the live lesson page, are kept in wp-content/uploads/rooster-lms-protected/ and served only through Rooster LMS to learners with access (with HTTP range requests, so videos seek), never by their file address. On Apache and LiteSpeed the folder’s .htaccess denies direct access. On nginx, add this rule to the site’s server block (Tools > Site Health shows it with your site’s path):

location ^~ /wp-content/uploads/rooster-lms-protected/ { deny all; return 403; }

How are the figures of large organisations kept fast?

Each organisation’s member and progress figures are stored per unit and updated in the same step as every change, so reports and portals stay fast with 100,000 members. After an update that adds this storage, existing organisations show the same figures, read directly, until a background task fills their stored figures, usually within minutes (Tools > Site Health lists the organisations not filled yet; wp rooster-lms stats rebuild --all fills them at once). A nightly check compares the stored figures with a full count and repairs any difference (after a direct change to the tables, say); wp rooster-lms stats verify --repair does it at once.

Can I change the addresses of courses and categories?

Yes, under Rooster LMS > Settings. Changing a base changes every existing link to your courses, lessons and categories; old links are not redirected yet.

Third-party code

Rooster LMS ships its own H5P engine: the H5P core library (GPL-3.0) and the H5P editor library (MIT) under vendor/h5p/, with CKEditor 4 (GPL-2.0-or-later) and a set of H5P content types under their own licences (each library.json names it). The PHP libraries are the official H5P plugin’s, unmodified. H5P runs on the jQuery and jQuery UI bundled with WordPress, and H5P Audio’s old Flash fallback (Flowplayer) is replaced by a stub. The combination is distributed under the GPL version 3 terms; the full notice with every folder, licence file and the ported code is design/THIRD-PARTY.md in the source repository.

The admin icons are Lucide icons (copyright Lucide Icons and Contributors), used under the ISC licence, which is GPL-compatible; the licence ships in assets/icons/LICENSE-lucide.txt. Only the icons used are bundled, as inline SVG.

The calendars use FullCalendar 7.1.3 with its bundled Preact 10.29.8 and temporal-polyfill 1.0.6, all MIT licensed (GPL-compatible); their licence texts ship in THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.txt. A calendar loads only on pages that show one and makes no remote calls.

Can developers extend it?

Rooster LMS is built to be extended. Its records live in its own tables; every change fires an action (for example rooster_lms_attempt_graded, rooster_lms_certificate_issued or rooster_lms_member_updated), and filters such as rooster_lms_report_columns, rooster_lms_data_tables and rooster_lms_portal_tabs change what the screens show. The WP-CLI commands are under wp rooster-lms. The developer notes in the development repository describe every hook with its arguments, and the public data-table API.

The JavaScript and styles are built from the readable sources in src/ (with src/calendar/) by @wordpress/scripts: npm install && npm run build. The JavaScript unit tests (npm run test:js) live in the development repository only. The same build makes the admin stylesheet assets/dist/admin.bundle.min.css, the minified concatenation of the readable sheets in assets/ui/ and assets/admin/ (its step bin/build-assets.js ships with the plugin).

A block theme that publishes the Rooster contracts in its style.css header (our own Rooster Zero theme) gets the plugin’s colours mapped to its presets, template slots for the course pages and a content-changed action for its page cache.