LearnDash Certificate Renewal

The problem

Certificate Expiry tells a student their certificate is about to lapse. The obvious next question is “how do I renew?”, and without an answer in the email it turns into a support ticket. Someone on your team then works out what the student needs to do and sends them there by hand.

Three ways to renew, chosen per course

• Retake the whole course. The default. The renewal link opens the course page.
• Pass a recertification quiz. Pick one quiz from the course. Passing it renews the certificate without the student retaking everything else. The picker only lists quizzes that belong to that course.
• One-click renewal (shown in the settings as “Admin re-issues manually (one-click)”). If you set a renewal product, the renewal link puts it straight into the WooCommerce cart, and the certificate renews when the order reaches the status set in Certificate Expiry. Use the same product as the first certificate, or pick a separate one if renewal should cost less.

If WooCommerce isn’t active, you can still renew certificates by hand from the Certifications screen.

The renewal link

Certificate Expiry’s reminder emails include a {renewal_link} placeholder. With Renewal active, that link is signed and personal: it belongs to one student and one course, stays valid for 30 days, and sends the student to the right place for that course’s renewal mode.

We tried to break it. Changing the student or the course inside the link, using an expired link or pasting a malformed one all failed, and the visitor simply lands on a normal page instead of an error.

What it doesn’t do

• It needs LearnDash Certificate Expiry. On its own it only shows a notice.
• “Retake the whole course” doesn’t reset the student’s LearnDash progress. For a genuine start-from-scratch retake, reset their progress in LearnDash first, or use the quiz option.
• Paid renewals are matched to the customer account on the WooCommerce order, so students need to be logged in when they check out. Guest orders can’t be matched to a student.
• A separate renewal price only applies to the one-click mode.