Frequently Asked Questions

Getting started

What does this plugin actually do? It links wpForo forums to LearnDash courses so a forum can be reserved for a course’s students. Enrolled students are added to a per-course wpForo usergroup automatically, and the forum’s permissions are set from the privacy mode you choose.

Where do I configure the link? On the wpForo forum edit screen (full options) or the LearnDash course edit screen under Course Forums (link/unlink only). See Link a course to a forum.

Do I need anything else installed? Yes — both LearnDash and wpForo must be active. Without them, LearnDash wpForo deactivates itself.

Privacy and access modes

Does a forum automatically become private when I link it to a paid course? Only in Automatic privacy mode. A closed/paid course makes the forum private; a free/open course keeps it public. The other three modes (Always Private, Public read, Always Public) ignore the price and apply a fixed policy.

What do the four privacy options do? Automatic (policy from the course price), Always Private (members read and post), Public read / members-only posting (everyone reads, members post), Always Public (no restriction). See Privacy and access modes.

What is the difference between All and Any? When a forum gates more than one course: All requires access to every linked course, Any requires access to just one. Default is Any.

How do I customise the no-access message? Edit Message shown to users without access on the forum settings box. HTML is allowed, so you can link to a sales page.

Membership sync

Do I add students to the forum manually? No. Enrolling a student in a linked course adds them to the forum usergroup automatically; unenrolling removes them.

What happens when a student is unenrolled? They are removed from the course usergroup immediately and lose forum access.

Enrollment looks out of sync — can I re-scan? Yes. Saving the mapping on either the course or forum side triggers a full reconcile for that forum: it rebuilds permissions, ensures the usergroup exists, and backfills every current enrollee.

Multi-board support

Does it work with wpForo boards? Yes. Every forum edit screen on every board has the same settings box, and the course-side picker lists forums from all boards in one list.

Can the same course gate forums on several boards? Yes. Link the course to one forum per board — a single usergroup is created for the course and reused across all boards. Enrolling unlocks them all; unenrolling revokes them all.

Can one forum gate multiple courses? Yes. A forum can be linked to several courses at once — select them all in the Associated Courses list. Use the All / Any access mode to decide whether a student needs access to every linked course or just one.

How do I show the linked forum on the course page? Add the Course wpForo Forum widget (Appearance → Widgets) to a sidebar that shows on single course pages. It lists every linked forum across every board. Results are cached per course for 5 minutes.

Non-enrolled users can still see the forum in the forum list — why? The plugin gates reading and replying inside restricted topics; it does not hide the forum’s name from wpForo’s own forum list. Use a private privacy mode, and leave Forum View off, to block the topic content itself.

Troubleshooting and upgrades

I upgraded and my old mappings are missing. The upgrade migrates old ld_forum_* / ld_board_forum_* options into the mapping table automatically on the first admin request. If a mapping still looks missing, open the forum and re-save it. See Troubleshooting.

What PHP versions are supported? The plugin is written for modern PHP and is clean on PHP 8.2 and later (the deprecated FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING was removed for 8.2+ compatibility).

Is the plugin translation-ready? Yes. All user-facing strings use the learndash-wpforo text domain, and a .pot file ships in /languages.

What data does the plugin store? One custom table ({prefix}ldwpforo_map) holding the course-to-forum mappings, plus the legacy ld_forum_* options and the ldwpforo_db_version option. It does not store personal data beyond the WordPress user ids already managed by LearnDash and wpForo.