Documentation

Setup guides and reference material for all three plugins.

Start with the plugin you’re using below.

Turgor LMS

Turgor LMS

Requirements

  • WordPress 6.x
  • PHP 8.1+
  • LearnDash is not required — Turgor LMS is a complete, standalone course platform. It is only relevant if you are migrating an existing LearnDash site across.

Getting started

  1. Install and activate Turgor LMS (the free base plugin). If you have a Turgor LMS Pro license, install that too and enter your key under Turgor LMS → License.
  2. Migrating an existing LearnDash site: go to Turgor LMS → Migration and start the guided import wizard. It imports courses, lessons, quizzes, questions, categories, enrollments, and student progress in one pass.
  3. Review the imported courses. Each one is checked against the original LearnDash data before you go live, and LearnDash is not touched yet at this point — both plugins can run side by side while you check everything.
  4. Turn on any of the built-in add-ons you want under Turgor LMS → Addons — Exam Mode, Student Dashboard, and Quiz Toolkit’s functionality all ship inside Turgor LMS and can be enabled from here.
  5. When you are satisfied, click “Go live” on the Migration screen. One button claims every route for Turgor LMS and switches LearnDash off — no manual URL changes.
  6. Starting fresh, with no LearnDash site to migrate: skip straight to Courses → Add New and build directly in Turgor LMS.

Common questions

Do I need LearnDash installed to use Turgor LMS?

No. Turgor LMS is a complete, standalone course platform. LearnDash is only relevant if you are migrating an existing LearnDash site — Turgor LMS reads its data during migration, then LearnDash can be switched off.

What exactly does the migration bring across?

Courses, lessons, quizzes, questions, categories, enrollments, student progress, and certificates — verified against the original LearnDash data before you go live.

Can I check everything before switching LearnDash off?

Yes. Migration does not touch LearnDash itself — both plugins can run side by side while you review the imported courses. LearnDash only switches off when you explicitly click “Go live” on the Migration screen.

Where do Exam Mode, Student Dashboard, and Quiz Toolkit live once I have migrated?

Under Turgor LMS → Addons. Each one is built into Turgor LMS and can be toggled on independently, rather than needing to be installed as a separate plugin.

Exam Mode

Exam Mode

Requirements

  • WordPress 6.x with LearnDash 4.x or 5.x
  • If you’re on LearnDash 5.x: switch off LearnDash’s newer “Quiz Builder” in LearnDash → Settings → Quiz Builder before activating Exam Mode. Exam Mode reads questions through LearnDash’s classic quiz API, so it won’t see questions built with the newer Quiz Builder until this is switched to Classic.

Getting started

  1. Install and activate Exam Mode. On activation it creates two database tables (wp_lem_attempts and wp_lem_attempt_answers) to store attempt data — no manual setup required.
  2. Go to Exams → Add New in the WordPress admin menu.
  3. Set the exam title, overall duration in minutes, and passing percentage — one timer covers the whole exam, not each section individually.
  4. Use the “+ Add Quizzes” picker to pull in one or more existing LearnDash quizzes as exam topics (sections). Students move freely between topic tabs within that single overall timer.
  5. Turn on negative marking and set a deduction per wrong answer — either one value for the whole exam, or a different value per topic (for example, 0.25 for General Awareness and 0.5 for Quantitative Aptitude).
  6. Publish. Students who take the exam get a countdown timer, section tabs, a question navigator showing attempted / marked-for-review / unanswered questions, and — on submit — a scored results screen showing their marks and pass/fail status against your threshold.

Common questions

My questions aren’t showing up in the quiz picker.

This is almost always the LearnDash Quiz Builder setting above — switch it to Classic and re-check.

Can negative marking differ by question type or section?

Yes — set it per section when you add quizzes to the exam.

Student Dashboard

Student Dashboard

Requirements

  • WordPress 5.8+ with LearnDash LMS active
  • PHP 7.2+

Getting started

  1. Install and activate Student Dashboard. There’s no settings screen to configure — the dashboard needs nothing set up per site.
  2. Add the [lb_student_dashboard] shortcode to any page — a “My Account”-style page is a natural fit. Each logged-in student sees only their own data, so there’s nothing to configure per student either.
  3. Optional: pin the color scheme with [lb_student_dashboard theme="dark"] or theme="light". Left unset, it follows the visitor’s own OS light/dark setting.
  4. Open the page as an enrolled student. The dashboard loads in three tabs — Overview (scores, streaks, an activity heatmap, and a “Lessons to Revisit” callout for anything averaging under 60%), My Courses (progress per course with a Start/Continue/Review link), and Performance (a score-over-time chart, a per-test breakdown, and an optional leaderboard, per course).

Common questions

Does this replace the default LearnDash profile page?

It’s a shortcode you place on whichever page you want — most sites use it to replace the default LearnDash profile page, but you can also add it as a separate “My Results” page and keep both.

How is a lesson flagged as “needs revisiting”?

Automatically — any lesson where the student’s average score across that lesson’s own quizzes falls under 60% is flagged, computed on the fly. There’s no manual tagging of lessons or questions by category.

Will this slow down my site as attempt history grows?

No — the heavier numbers (course averages, leaderboards, streaks) are rebuilt hourly in the background rather than recalculated on every page view, so dashboard load times don’t scale with your full attempt history.

Quiz Toolkit

Quiz Toolkit

Requirements

  • WordPress 6.1+ with LearnDash LMS active
  • PHP 7.4+

Getting started

  1. Install and activate Quiz Toolkit. It adds a “Quiz Toolkit” item under the LearnDash LMS menu in your WordPress admin.
  2. On the Bulk Import tab, either upload an Excel file (XLS/XLSX) — put each quiz on its own sheet to import several at once — or switch to “Import from Google Sheet” and paste a link shared as “Anyone with the link – Viewer”, with columns for Quiz Title, Question, Question Type, Answer Options, Correct Answer, Points, Category, and Difficulty. Either way you get a preview of every quiz detected before anything is created.
  3. To import from a Word document instead, use the Word Doc Import tab’s Simple Format: one .docx (or Google Doc) with every question written as plain labeled lines — Q:, Type:, the answer options with a trailing * on the correct one(s), and optional Points: and Hint: lines — a blank line before the next “Q:” starts the next question. The older two-file (questions doc + answers doc) format and legacy Google Docs import are both still available.
  4. To keep a quiz updated automatically instead of re-uploading by hand, use the Auto Sync tab: point it at a Google Sheet or Google Doc, pick how often to check (hourly, every 6 or 12 hours, or daily), and it re-imports on that schedule in the background — or click “Run Sync Now” for an immediate run. Rows removed from the source are never deleted on the site; sync only adds and updates.
  5. To move quizzes to another LearnDash site, export from LearnDash → Quizzes — every quiz row gets XLS, XLSX, JSON, and DOCX export links, any of which can be re-imported on the destination site.

Common questions

If I import the same quiz again after editing it, will I get duplicate questions?

Only if you want that. Turn on “Update duplicate questions” under General Settings and a re-import updates questions that share a title instead of adding copies. Leave it off and new questions are added alongside the old ones, with a separate setting to discard the old ones from the quiz (and, optionally, the database) first.

Who’s allowed to run an import?

Set the minimum role on the General Settings tab — Administrator, Editor, or Author. Every import and export request is checked against that capability directly, plus a nonce, not just hidden from the menu for lower roles.

Can students download a quiz as a Word document?

Only if you turn on “Frontend Quiz Export” under General Settings. Add the [qtld_quiz_export] shortcode to a quiz page (or any page, with a quiz_id attribute) and enrolled, logged-in students get a download button — it never renders for a visitor who isn’t logged in or doesn’t have LearnDash access to that quiz.

Where do uploaded import files end up?

Outside the public web root, under a generated filename with directory browsing disabled — a spreadsheet or document containing your answer key isn’t sitting at a guessable public URL. Every import also verifies the actual file contents, not just its extension, before processing it.

Still stuck?

Questions go straight to the people who wrote the plugins, not a ticket queue.

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