Description

Turgor Exam Engine runs competitive-exam style tests on your own WordPress site and database – not a hosted service – and the courses that lead up to them.

Exam engine

Eight question types, including fill-in-the-blank and free-answer questions that accept a numeric range (an answer key of “6300..6400”, as GATE and IIT JAM publish).
Negative marking, with a per-question penalty where a paper needs one.
Standalone mock tests: open any quiz to every signed-in student from its own page, no course needed.
Timed papers split into sections, with retake limits and question and answer shuffling.
A question bank with categories and difficulty levels.
Sitewide defaults for every setting, overridable on any single quiz.
A per-question review after submission, and a results chart students can see with [turgee_quiz_results].

Course builder

Build each course as an outline of sections, topics, lessons, sub-lessons and quizzes. Drag items into place or use the + buttons, create a lesson or quiz by typing its title, and set prerequisites and completion rules per course. Students see the same outline on the course page.

Access & enrollment

Open, no-signup courses and one-click free enrollment, with completion rules you set per course.

Already running LearnDash?

A guided import brings your courses, lessons, quizzes and enrolled students across, with verification tools that check the migration actually worked before you switch over – nothing is deleted or changed on your live site until you say so.

Want to sell what you build?

Turgor Exam Engine is free and complete on its own. Turgor Exam Engine Pro adds WooCommerce and Google Play Billing checkout, bundled Products, class reports, certificates issued automatically on completion, copy protection for lesson and quiz content, and student feedback tools – available separately, never required. Everything included in Turgor Exam Engine works fully without it.

Requirements

PHP 8.1 or newer
WordPress 6.7 or newer

Third-party libraries

Chart.js 4.5.1, MIT License – draws the quiz-results chart. Bundled minified as assets/vendor/chart.umd.min.js; the unminified source is at https://github.com/chartjs/Chart.js.

Installation

Upload the plugin files to /wp-content/plugins/turgor-exam-engine, or install the zip directly through Plugins Add New Upload Plugin.
Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen.
Open Turgor Exam Engine in the wp-admin sidebar to create your first course, or go to Turgor Exam Engine Migration (shown once LearnDash is active) if you’re moving off LearnDash.

FAQ

Do I need LearnDash installed to use this?

No. Turgor Exam Engine is a standalone course platform and works with no other LMS plugin present. LearnDash support exists specifically for sites migrating away from it.

Will migrating from LearnDash delete my existing LearnDash data?

No. The import reads your existing LearnDash content and copies it into Turgor Exam Engine’s own tables; nothing is deleted, and LearnDash can stay active and serving your site right up until you choose to switch over.

Can I sell courses with the free plugin?

Course access rules (open, free enrollment, restricted) are included free. Selling courses for payment – WooCommerce, subscriptions, or Google Play Billing – requires Turgor Exam Engine Pro.

Where do I report a bug or ask for help?

https://turgorlabs.com/documentation/

Which shortcodes are there?

[turgee_quiz id="123"] – the quiz player for quiz 123 (on a quiz’s own page, id can be left out).
[turgee_quiz_results] – the signed-in student’s score history as a chart.
[turgee_course_progress course_id="123"] – a course’s progress bar.
[turgee_course_content course_id="123"] – a course’s lesson and quiz list.
[turgee_breadcrumbs] – Course > Lesson > Topic > Quiz trail on any of those pages.
[turgee_login] – a sign-in form, with lost-password and reset-password screens.
[turgee_profile] – the signed-in student’s profile: quiz stats, activity, their courses with progress, and scores over time.
[turgee_if_logged_in]...[/turgee_if_logged_in] and [turgee_if_logged_out]...[/turgee_if_logged_out] – show the enclosed content only to signed-in or signed-out visitors.
[turgee_courses] – a grid of your published courses, with lesson count, whether each is free, and the student’s own progress. Options: limit="12", orderby="menu_order|title|date", order="ASC|DESC". With Turgor Exam Engine Pro, this becomes the Pro storefront (bundles and prices).
[turgee_quizzes] – a grid of your standalone mock tests (quizzes with “Open to every signed-in student” ticked), with question count, time limit, negative marking and the student’s best score. Options: limit="12", orderby="date|title|menu_order", order="ASC|DESC".

All published courses are also listed at /courses/ on a new site.

How do I add videos to a lesson?

Use the Lesson videos box on the lesson or topic editor. Each video has an address (choose an MP4 from the media library), an optional title and poster image, and optional chapters, one per line, such as 1:54 Exam summary.

A lesson can have several videos, one for each subtopic. Each video has a tag such as [turgee_video n="2"]. Paste the tag into the lesson text where that video should play, under its subtopic’s heading for example. A video whose tag is not in the text plays above the lesson. Each player has a chapter list, a speed menu and resume, and starting one video pauses the others.

To keep paid videos on a CDN that only hands out signed, expiring links (Bunny CDN), use Turgor Exam Engine Pro’s video hosting.

Does this plugin contact any external service?

No. Turgor Exam Engine makes no requests to outside servers. A lesson video plays from the address you entered for it, loaded by the student’s browser or app, not by the plugin. Links to the documentation and to Turgor Exam Engine Pro on turgorlabs.com are ordinary links that only open when you click them.

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

“Turgor Exam Engine” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

turgorlabs

Translate “Turgor Exam Engine” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

0.3.10

New: every Google Play unlock attempt is now recorded, not only the ones that succeeded, so Turgor Exam Engine Pro’s Orders screen can show a student stuck mid-purchase. (0.3.9 sites get the new table on update.)

0.3.9

New: lesson videos. The Lesson videos box on the lesson and topic editor sets any number of videos, each with a title, poster and chapters. Place each one in the lesson text with its [turgee_video n="2"] tag; one without a tag plays above the lesson. Players have a chapter list, a speed menu and resume. The app gets the videos from lessons/{id}.
New: lessons?course= and the course outline say which lessons have a video (has_video), never where.
Changed: the quiz builder’s “Bulk import questions from CSV” box is removed. Importing whole papers from Excel, CSV, Word and Google Sheets is Turgor Exam Engine Pro’s Quiz Toolkit. Questions you already imported stay as they are.
For developers: turgee_lesson_video_url filters the URL a student is given for a video; Turgor Exam Engine Pro’s video hosting uses it to sign CDN links.

0.3.8

New: Topics – group lessons under a topic inside a section, or directly in the course. Quizzes can sit in the course, a section, a topic, a lesson or a sub-lesson. The pages inside a lesson are now called Sub-lessons.
New: drag a lesson or quiz into a section, topic or lesson in the course builder; move the pointer left or right while dragging to step out or in a level.
New: the course page shows each section once, with its topics, lessons and quizzes nested under it and a count of what each holds.
New: create lessons, sub-lessons and quizzes straight from the course page, and open any of them for editing in a new tab.
New: GET turgee/v1/courses/{id}/outline returns a course as a tree – sections, topics, lessons, sub-lessons and every quiz – for apps.
Changed: every REST API route is served under turgee/v1 (and turgee-dashboard/v1) on every site, with nothing to switch on first. The Migration screen’s “Switch the site over” step is gone, and on a site moved from LearnDash, quizzes work as soon as the content is copied.
Fixed: a passed quiz is ticked as done on the course page.
Changed: Elementor widgets are named turgee-course-content, turgee-course-infobar and turgee-profile. Sites moved from LearnDash also keep LearnDash’s widget names so their templates keep working.
Fixed: a question without its own title no longer shows its text twice, on the quiz or in the quiz builder.
Changed: on a site that never used LearnDash, courses, lessons, topics and quizzes use this plugin’s own content types. Sites moved from LearnDash keep theirs, so no links change.
New: a question’s own negative marks can be set to 0 to override the quiz’s rate; leave the box blank to use the rate. Existing questions are unchanged.
New: marks and penalties keep four decimal places (for example 0.8571).
New: write a question in a second language (for example Hindi) alongside the first, and turn on partial marks for multiple-answer questions – both used by Exam Mode in Pro.
Fixed: a question that is only an image can be saved.

0.3.7

New: courses work on a fresh site with no LearnDash – create courses, lessons and quizzes straight away.
New: [turgee_courses] shows a free grid of your courses with lesson counts and each student’s progress; all courses are also listed at /courses/.
New: standalone mock tests. Tick “Open to every signed-in student” in a quiz’s settings and anyone signed in can take it from its page, without a course or enrolment. List them all on any page with [turgee_quizzes].
New: put a quiz straight into a course – a test between lessons or a final exam – with “Add quiz to course” in the course builder. Course-level quizzes brought over from LearnDash now show to students too.
New: switch negative marking on per quiz and set the share of marks lost for a wrong answer.
New: the plugin’s home screen lists every shortcode and what it shows.
Improved: the course and quiz builders are open when you add a new course or quiz, instead of folded away at the bottom of the editor.
Fixed: a new course starts as Free when Turgor Exam Engine Pro is not installed, so students can enrol straight away.
Fixed: after activation the plugin now opens its home screen as intended.
Improved: clearer, jargon-free wording across the Migration screen and settings – steps are now Check, Copy your content, Switch the site over, Protect your edits and Turn off LearnDash.
Renamed: Turgor LMS is now Turgor Exam Engine (slug turgor-exam-engine). Courses, students, quizzes and settings move across automatically the first time it runs. Shortcodes are now [turgee_…]; on a site that used the old [tg_…] names, those keep working.
Changed: negative marking and quiz time limits always work in this plugin; they no longer depend on Turgor Exam Engine Pro being active.
Changed: copy protection for lesson and quiz content now ships in Turgor Exam Engine Pro.
Changed: updates now come only from WordPress.org; the plugin no longer checks turgorlabs.com for updates.
Changed: the admin menu sits in its default position, and Pro features are described on one “Pro add-on” page instead of separate locked menu items.
Security: tightened nonce checks, input sanitizing and output escaping on every form and admin screen.
Updated: Chart.js 4.5.1.

0.3.6 – 2026-09-29

New: free-answer questions can accept a numeric range. Write an accepted answer as “6300..6400” and any number typed from 6300 to 6400 is marked correct – for numerical-answer papers such as IIT JAM and GATE, whose keys are ranges.

0.3.5 – 2026-09-27

Fixed: questions added to a brand-new quiz – pasted as a bulk CSV or written in the question composer – were discarded on its first Publish, and the quiz was never set up. Removing the last question from a quiz now saves too.

0.3.4 – 2026-09-27

New: Settings -> Sign-in link. Send the Sign in buttons on course, lesson and quiz pages to your own login page or login plugin instead of the WordPress login – with an optional CSS class for plugins that open a login popup.

0.3.3 – 2026-09-26

New: Settings Free courses. When on, signed-in students can open any Restricted + Free course straight away, on the website and in the app, without clicking Enroll – their enrolment is recorded when they first open a lesson or quiz. Off by default.
Fixed: pages built with Turgor’s Elementor widgets could fail to load with a fatal error.

0.3.2 – 2026-09-25

Fixed: a course’s “X/Y lessons” count on the home screen could get stuck showing 0 forever, even though the course had real content (and its own syllabus screen showed it correctly). Lesson counts are no longer read from the per-student progress cache, which isn’t the right place for a fact that’s the same for every student.

0.3.1 – 2026-09-25

Fixed: a course, lesson or topic title pasted from Word/Docs could show literal text like “–” in the app instead of the actual dash/quote character it stands for.

0.3.0 – 2026-09-25

Added: /lb/v1/courses now tells the app which course, if any, is a bundle Product’s auto-created storefront placeholder, so it can hide it from your normal course list once you own it (requires Turgor Exam Engine Pro 0.3.6+).

0.2.9 – 2026-09-18

Fixed: a newly added paid course’s Play Store purchase option could take an app update to appear, instead of working immediately once set up on the Products page (requires Turgor Exam Engine Pro).

0.2.7 – 2026-09-17

The plugin can now notify you when a new version is available and let you update it with one click, right from your Plugins page.

0.2.4 – 2026-09-17

Quiz Settings is now tidied under the Quizzes menu to reduce clutter in the sidebar. Still reachable the same way as before.

0.2.3 – 2026-09-13

Added a fourth question type, free-answer (short typed-text), alongside single/multiple/cloze – auto-graded by exact-match comparison, with its own Quiz Player rendering and review support.

0.2.2 – 2026-09-11

Fixed several places where text couldn’t be fully translated.
Tightened up how a few admin screens and the sign-in/password-reset forms handle submitted data.

0.2.1 – 2026-09-11

Removed the plugin’s self-hosted update checker. Updates are now served entirely through the WordPress.org plugin directory, like every other plugin listed there.

0.2.0 – 2026-09-04

Redesigned the course syllabus and lesson pages: clearer visual hierarchy between sections, lessons and a topic’s own quiz, and a persistent “what’s next” bar so students always see how to continue without scrolling to the bottom of the page.
Added the groundwork for Turgor Exam Engine Pro’s new fixed-window course access option (Pro only – see its own changelog).

0.1.0

Initial release: course builder, quiz engine, access & enrollment, and LearnDash migration.