Gather Grove Courses turns your WordPress site into a home for self-paced learning. You build a course from modules and lessons, and your members work through it in a clean, focused lesson player that keeps their place. What you get: A drag-and-drop course builder. Course → Module → Lesson, reordere
PricingFree downloadThe WordPress.org download is free. Pro versions, add-ons or external services may cost extra.
CompatibilityRequires WordPress 6.9 and PHP 8.1.
SourceWordPress plugins · Oct 18, 2026
01 / Source details
About this tool.
Gather Grove Courses turns your WordPress site into a home for self-paced learning. You build a course from modules and lessons, and your members work through it in a clean, focused lesson player that keeps their place.
What you get:
A drag-and-drop course builder. Course → Module → Lesson, reordered by dragging. Each lesson is a stack of blocks you arrange in any order: text (written in the familiar WordPress editor or in Markdown), video, audio, image gallery, downloadable file, a list of materials, an embedded form, spacers and dividers.
A lesson player your members will like. Lesson navigation, a progress ring, “Mark complete”, a “pick up where you left off” resume point, and a native video and audio player with speed control.
Watch-to-complete, done fairly. For video and audio you host yourself, a lesson can complete on its own once a member has actually watched enough of it. Skipping ahead does not count, and watch progress follows the member’s account from phone to laptop.
Prerequisites. Lock a module until the one before it is finished, or a course until another course is complete.
Enroll members your way. Switch on open enrollment and logged-in members enroll themselves from the course page with one click, or add and remove people yourself from the course builder. Selling through Gather Grove Booking and applications through Gather Grove Forms are there too when you want them.
Free preview lessons. Mark any lesson as a preview and anyone can watch it, enrolled or not.
A Resource Library. A Resources tab in the player lists every download in one place: course-wide sections you curate (a syllabus, a welcome pack) plus the files attached to each lesson.
My Courses. The [gather_grove_courses_library] shortcode gives each member a page of their courses with progress, and a one-click “Starter pages” button builds a ready-made Classroom page for you.
Preview as a member. See any lesson exactly as an enrolled member would before you publish it.
Fonts per course. Pick the heading and body fonts the player uses, from your Elementor Global Fonts, a curated list of fonts bundled with the plugin (nothing is loaded from a font service), or the reader’s system fonts.
Your words. Call your courses “Programs” or your members “Students”: the words members read follow your studio’s wording.
Media Library awareness. Open any file in the Media Library to see which lessons use it, and get a clear warning before deleting one that a lesson still needs.
Elementor support. A Course Card widget and dynamic tags (title, description, image, lesson count, progress and more) for designing course pages and loop grids. With Elementor Pro, the Starter pages button also builds Theme Builder templates for your course pages.
LearnDash migrator. Move your courses, lessons, students and their progress across from LearnDash, with a dry run first so you can see exactly what will happen.
Privacy tools. Watch progress is included in WordPress’s Export Personal Data and Erase Personal Data tools.
On-brand. Styles are driven by CSS custom properties, so the player follows your site’s palette.
Part of the Gather Grove suite
Gather Grove Courses is one part of Gather Grove, a family of plugins for running and growing a creative business on your own WordPress site. The plugins share one admin, one list of people, and one look:
Gather Grove Booking — classes, appointments and events, with online payment. Sell course access through Booking’s checkout, and a purchase enrolls the member automatically.
Gather Grove Forms — forms and applications. Embed a form in a lesson, or require an approved application before someone can enroll.
Gather Grove Communities — private member spaces. Members can share a lesson note with the group and discuss it there.
Gather Grove Pulse — email broadcasts, automated sequences and a contact list that knows who booked, joined or enrolled.
Gather Grove Companion — an AI assistant for your admin, and a chat helper for your visitors.
Learn more at gathergrove.io .
Free and Professional
Everything listed above is free, and stays free. The free plugin has no locked features, never expires, and is not a trial.
Gather Grove Courses Professional is a separate plugin, available from gathergrove.io, for studios that run cohorts and assessments. It adds:
Quizzes with seven question types, including listening and ABX questions with a blind mode, automatic grading and an essay grading queue
Completion certificates with public verification links
Cohorts, with a roster you manage from the course builder
Drip release by calendar, enrollment date or live-class attendance
Live-class attendance that completes the matching lesson, with Gather Grove Booking
The full set of Elementor widgets, including Course Catalog, Curriculum and Progress Ring
Interactive lesson blocks: flashcards, a hotspot image, a before-and-after compare and step-by-step guides, with each student’s progress saved to their account
Compare every feature at gathergrove.io/docs/pricing .
External services
This plugin can connect to the following services. None of them is contacted unless you use the feature that needs it.
YouTube, Vimeo and other oEmbed providers — when you paste a YouTube, Vimeo or other video link into a lesson, WordPress’s oEmbed system asks that provider for the embed code, and the provider’s player then loads from its own servers when a member opens the lesson. The member’s browser connects to the provider, which receives their IP address and whatever the provider’s player collects. YouTube terms of service: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms Google privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy Vimeo terms of service: https://vimeo.com/terms Vimeo privacy policy: https://vimeo.com/privacy
Postmark — used to send your site’s email through your own Postmark account, only after you connect one under Gather Grove → Settings → Email delivery. When connected, your server sends Postmark your key, your sending domain (to register it and check its DNS records), and each email it is asked to send: sender, recipients, subject, body and any attachments. If you also switch on “Send all your site’s email through Postmark”, every email your site sends goes this way. Postmark then posts delivery, bounce, open, click, spam-complaint and unsubscribe reports back to a secret address on your site. Nothing is sent unless you connect an account. Terms of service: https://postmarkapp.com/terms-of-service Privacy policy: https://postmarkapp.com/privacy-policy
Web push services (Google, Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft) — when a member turns on phone notifications, their browser registers with its own push service, and your site sends each notification to that service for delivery. The notification carries a short title and a link. The push service receives it with the member’s browser subscription address, and with your site’s admin email address, which the web push standard requires as a contact for the sending site. Nothing is sent unless a member turns notifications on. Google privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy Mozilla privacy policy: https://www.mozilla.org/privacy/ Apple privacy policy: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/ Microsoft privacy statement: https://privacy.microsoft.com/privacystatement
See it in action
Screenshots & previews.
The course builder — modules and lessons on the left, the selected lesson's content, format and duration on the right.The lesson player as a member sees it: a progress ring, the course outline with completed lessons ticked, and Mark complete.A member's classroom — every course they're in, with progress and a Continue button.Members — everyone enrolled in a course, with add-by-name-or-email search and one-click remove.A course's settings, including Open enrollment: let logged-in members enroll themselves for free.What a visitor sees on an open-enrollment course: the outline with locked lessons and an Enroll now button.
02 / Source details
Getting started.
01Install Gather Grove Courses from the Plugins screen, or upload the gather-grove-courses directory to /wp-content/plugins/ .
02Activate it through the Plugins screen.
03Open Gather Grove Courses in the admin sidebar and add your first course, then build its modules and lessons in the course builder.
04Under Gather Grove Courses → Settings, press “Create starter pages” to build a Classroom page where members find their courses.
03 / Source details
Frequently asked questions.
Where is my course data kept?
In your own WordPress database. Courses are a WordPress post type, and lessons, progress and watch state live in tables belonging to this plugin. Nothing is sent to our servers.
How do members get access to a course?
Turn on “Open enrollment” in a course’s settings and logged-in members can enroll themselves from the course page, or add people yourself from the Members panel in the course builder. A member is also enrolled when they buy the course through Gather Grove Booking’s checkout, when their application is approved in Gather Grove Forms, or when you import them from LearnDash. Preview lessons are open to everyone.
Do I need the other Gather Grove plugins?
No. Courses is complete on its own: build courses, and enroll members through open enrollment or the course builder’s Members panel. The other plugins are there if your studio grows into them — Booking to sell courses, Forms to take applications.
Do I need Elementor?
No. The lesson player, the builder and the My Courses page all work with any theme. Elementor adds a Course Card widget and dynamic tags; Elementor Pro adds Theme Builder templates.
What happens to my courses if I delete the plugin?
Nothing, by default. Deleting the plugin leaves your courses, lessons and progress in place, so reinstalling restores them. To remove that data too, turn on the switch in the General card under Gather Grove Courses → Settings before you delete the plugin.
Can I move from LearnDash?
Yes. Gather Grove Courses → Import scans your LearnDash courses, shows you a dry run, and then imports curriculum, students and their progress one course at a time.
Does it change anything about my site’s login or security?
Two small protections are on by default, shared by every Gather Grove plugin. Visitors who are not logged in can no longer read your site’s list of account names (WordPress normally publishes it at /wp-json/wp/v2/users and through ?author= links). And after 10 failed logins from one address in 15 minutes, that address has to wait before trying again. Logged-in editors are not affected, and sites behind Cloudflare are recognised automatically. If you already use a security plugin, or need the public account list, return false from the gather_grove/security/throttle_logins or gather_grove/security/hide_user_list filter to turn either off.
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