List LearnDash courses & lessons in a WordPress table

LearnDash is the world's leading WordPress LMS (Learning Management System) plugin. Keep reading to discover the easy way to list your LearnDash LMS courses and lessons in a searchable, filterable table.

LearnDash is a fantastic WordPress LMS. It makes it easy to create online courses with sophisticated features. And with the LearnDash WooCommerce add-on, you can even sell your courses online!

LearnDash comes with some neat layouts and shortcodes that you can use to display your courses and lessons - either in a grid or as a basic list. However, if you have lots of courses then you might find these slightly limiting. That's where the Posts Table Pro plugin comes in.

Keep reading to learn how to list any type of WordPress content in a table:

You can choose what information to display about your courses and lessons, and which courses you want to include. It's even possible to add filter dropdowns to help students to find particular LearnDash content more easily!

Before you start

We'll need the Posts Table Pro WordPress plugin in order to list courses and lessons from the LearnDash CMS in a table.

1. Get Posts Table Pro and install it on your WordPress site.
2. When you activate the plugin, the setup wizard will open automatically. Use this to activate your license key and choose the default settings for your tables. (I'll show you how to override these for individual tables later.)
3. Now you're ready to start listing LearnDash courses and lessons!

If you are not familiar with building courses on LearnDash, you can check out Learndash Dashboard. It comes with an intuitive frontend builder to help you create dashboards for instructors, students, and group leaders to monitor and manage anything related to their LearnDash account.

List LearnDash courses in a table

First, let's learn how to list any or all of your LearnDash courses in a table. You can add the table to any page on your site, or even to other locations such as sidebar widgets.

1. Go to the page where you want to list LearnDash courses.
2. Add the shortcode [posts_table post_type="sfwd-courses"]
3. Choose your columns, depending on which information you want to display about your courses. Here are some popular columns to get you started:
   • image - the course featured image.
   • title - the main course title.
   • content - the main course description. You can truncate this using the content length option.
   • categories - a list of the course categories.
   • date - the date on which the course was first published.
   • author - the WordPress user who created the course.
   • Check out the full list of available columns. You can add lots of additional columns including custom fields, taxonomies, and more!
4. List the columns in the shortcode you just created, like this: [posts_table post_type="sfwd-courses" columns="image,title,content,categories"]

If you don't like editing shortcodes, then you can select the post type and columns on the Posts Table Pro plugin settings page. However, I have used the shortcode method because this allows you to create multiple tables, each one different. For example, you need to do this in order to list courses in one table, and lessons in other tables.

Choosing which courses to display

If you don't want to list all the courses from your LearnDash LMS, that's fine too. Use these options to control which courses to list in the table. You can list LearnDash courses by category, ID, date, author, custom field or custom taxonomy values, and more.

An example list of LearnDash courses

I used the following shortcode to create this list of LearnDash courses:

[posts_table post_type="sfwd-courses" columns="image,title,categories,date" include="" filters="categories"]

Once you've installed Posts Table Pro, the same shortcode will work for you too!

List LearnDash lessons in a table

Next, we'll learn how to list LearnDash lessons in a table view. This is similar to listing courses, but you need to display the lessons post type instead.

1. Go to the page where you want to list lessons from the LearnDash LMS.
2. Add the shortcode [posts_table post_type="sfwd-lessons"]
3. Choose your columns, depending on which information you want to display about each lesson. Here are some popular columns to get you started:
   • image - the lesson's featured image.
   • title - the LearnDash lesson title.
   • content - the lesson content. You can truncate this using the content length option.
   • categories - a list of the categories that each lesson is in.
   • date - the date when the lesson was first published.
   • author - the WordPress user who created the lesson.
   • Check out the full list of available columns. You can add lots of additional columns including custom fields, taxonomies, and more!
4. List the columns in the shortcode you just created for example: [posts_table post_type="sfwd-lessons" columns="image,title,content,categories"]

Choosing which lessons to display

Normally, you would want to create separate tables listing the lessons from each course, instead of including the lessons from all courses in a single table.

The easiest way to do this is to use the 'include' option in Posts Table Pro to enter the ID's of the lessons that you want to list. For example:

[posts_table post_type="sfwd-lessons" include="001,002,003"]

There are also lots of other ways to choose which lessons to display. For example, you can list LearnDash lessons by category, tag, date, and more. Read about all the options here.

An example list of LearnDash lessons

I used this shortcode to create the above list of LearnDash lessons:

[posts_table post_type="sfwd-lessons" columns="image,title,author,date" include="59015,59021,59016,59017,59018,59019,59020" filters="categories"]

If you've installed Posts Table Pro, then the shortcode will work for you too! (Just replace the ID's with the ID's of the LearnDash lessons that you want to list.)

List LearnDash topics in a table

LearnDash has a feature that lets you add topics to your lessons and courses. This is an excellent way to group your course content thematically.

Posts Table Pro is excellent for allowing students to search by topic, as they simply type a topic name into the search box above the table.

The following shortcode will list topics in a table with columns for 'topic title', 'topic tag' and 'topic category'. It also has tag and category filters above the table:

[posts_table post_type="sfwd-topic" columns="title,tax:ld_topic_tag,tax:ld_topic_category" filters="tax:ld_topic_tag,tax:ld_topic_category"]

It's not possible to include the lesson name in the table because LearnDash stores the lesson as a separate post type, and not as a field on the topic post. If you want to list the topics for each lesson individually, then it's best to create a separate table for each lesson.

You can easily do this by using topic categories to record which lesson each topic is used on. You can then add the lesson name as a subheading on the page, and add a table listing the topics for that lesson underneath. For example, this shortcode will list all the topics in the 'Lesson 1' category:

[posts_table post_type="sfwd-topic" term="ld_topic_category:lesson1" columns="title,tax:ld_topic_tag"]

Sell LearnDash courses with WooCommerce and WooCommerce Product Table

Lots of LearnDash LMS websites like to take payment for courses. The student pays for a course online, and then receives instant access to the course and all its lessons, quizzes etc.

The LearnDash WooCommerce plugin provides an excellent way to do this. You install WooCommerce to provide the e-commerce and payment features, create a new product, select the 'Course' product type, and choose which course the student will be enrolled on when they buy the product.

The problem with this plugin is that your course products are listed in a standard store layout, which isn't really designed for selling courses! Each course product is displayed with a large image, and very little information about the course. It's difficult to compare courses alongside one another, and students have to scroll down a long way to see the different courses. Compare the two screenshots below:

As you can see, the table layout on the right is a much better way to display courses. If you want to display course images then you can add small thumbnails to the table, but there's no need for such huge images. It's better to show more products within a smaller amount of space, along with extra information about each course. You can also add quick filters and a search box to help people to find courses more easily, for example by category.

You can achieve all this by using the LearnDash WooCommerce plugin with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. And if you like the quick view buttons in the screenshot above, then you'll need the WooCommerce Quick View Pro plugin too. I'll tell you how to set all this up next.

Listing LearnDash products with WooCommerce Product Table

1. Set up LearnDash, add some courses, and then use the WooCommerce Integration add-on to create some course products.
2. If you'll be using WooCommerce Product Table to sell other types of products as well as courses, create a category for your course products.
3. Install WooCommerce Product Table.
4. Go to WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product Tables and choose the settings for your tables. In particular, choose which columns you want to include, and add filters to help people to buy specific courses more easily.
5. Create a new page, which you'll use to list your LearnDash course products.
6. Add the shortcode: [product_table category="courses"]. Replace 'courses' with the slug of the product category you want to display, or if you're not using categories then just use [product_table]).

This will create a searchable table listing the LearnDash courses that you have added as WooCommerce products. It's perfect if you want to create a one-page order form for signing up to your courses. Students can select the courses they want to sign up to (either using the add to cart buttons or quick-select checkboxes) and pay for them all using the WooCommerce checkout.

Add quick view buttons

Normally, students have to click on the product title to learn more about the course and read the full description. You can speed up the process by installing WooCommerce Quick View Pro.

This handy plugin lets you add 'quick view' buttons to the product table. Potential students can use these to learn more about each course from a quick view lightbox popup. That's much faster than having to visit a separate page for each product. It also keeps them on the list of courses, which encourages them to sign up for multiple courses at once.

Once you've installed WooCommerce Quick View Pro, simply add quick-view to your list of columns on the WooCommerce Product Table settings page. For example, your list of columns might now be: image,name,quick-view,buy

List WordPress forums

LearnDash integrates with the bbPress forum plugin, which is ideal if you want to provide discussion forums for your LMS courses.

If you'd like to list these in a table, instead of using the standard bbPress forum layouts, then check out our other tutorial. This provides full instructions on how to use Posts Table Pro to list your LearnDash forums and discussion topics in a table.

Learn how to list LearnDash forums in a searchable table view.

Display LearnDash quizzes in a table

It's also possible to list LearnDash quizzes in a table. To do this, install LearnDash and Posts Table Pro (as described above) and use the following shortcode:

[posts_table post_type="sfwd-quiz" columns="title,content"]

Use the include option to choose which quizzes to show. For example, if you wanted to list quizzes for a specific course only (e.g. on the course homepage), then you would add the ID's for all the quizzes for that course.

Displaying other LearnDash data in a table

So far, we've looked at how to display LearnDash courses, lessons, forums, quizzes and WooCommerce course products in a searchable table view. LearnDash also comes with other post types such as groups (groups) and assignments (sfwd-assignment) which you can list in a table.

To list other LearnDash post types, either select the post type on the Posts Table Pro settings page, or directly in the shortcode. For example: [posts_table post_type="sfwd-assignment"].

Adding a searchable directory of course materials to your LearnDash courses

Finally, there's one more way that you can improve your LearnDash courses. As well as listing the courses and course information in a searchable format, it's important to consider how to present your course materials.

Most LMS courses need to provide extra resources to their students. For example, this might include course handbooks, lesson notes, worksheets, links to useful websites, and so on. The best way to do this is with Posts Table Pro's sister plugin - Document Library Pro.

Document Library Pro makes it easy to:

For full details, check out our tutorial on how to add searchable course materials to LearnDash.

Where to get the plugins

As you can see, Posts Table Pro offers the perfect way to list LearnDash courses, lessons, forums and quizzes in a more searchable, interactive format. It's an excellent way to engage potential students and encourage them to take more courses.

Or if you want to list WooCommerce course products, then you can do this with WooCommerce Product Table and WooCommerce Quick View Pro.

Together, these plugins provide the perfect solution to listing any type of LearnDash data in a table. Get them today, and start listing your LearnDash content in new and better ways!