Getting Started

2 Comments

1. Hoping to get some clarification on your plans on keeping pace with updates that Tutor LMS may release. If I install the TutorPress plugin, I fear what may happen if I then update Tutor LMS afterwards!

   • Hi Gerald,

     I understand your concern. While TutorPress integrates with Tutor LMS, it operates largely independently. Our new, WordPress-native API, located under the /tutorpress/v1/* namespace, only utilizes Tutor LMS’s meta fields for data integration. This approach allows us to align far better with WordPress core by replacing Tutor LMS’s outdated AJAX endpoints with a modern WordPress REST API. Significantly reducing our reliance on their legacy code and minimizing compatibility risks. However, we still currently utilize some of their endpoints, such as those for Quizzes, due to their complexity.

     To be honest, your concern about plugins breaking after an update is always a risk in an open-source ecosystem like WordPress. However, TutorPress was designed to significantly mitigate this risk and to address related issues in Tutor LMS. TutorPress is made far more resilient to updates by adhering to modern WordPress best practices and operating independently of most Tutor LMS functionality — relying only on critical, minimal integration points. I won’t detail all the advantages of leveraging WordPress components and utilities, which offer benefits like common standards, wide compatibility, built-in security, and efficiencies that far surpass custom-built solutions. Ironically, the frontend course builder in Tutor LMS is a custom solution built with outdated and non-standard approaches that I also won’t get into here, but that comes with significant costs and risks. Its proprietary implementation eliminates the inherent compatibility with other plugins that is a central tenant of WordPress best practices, and therefore requires additional development for any integration. There have also been numerous reported conflicts specifically between Tutor LMS’s frontend course builder and other plugins, particularly security plugins. Even navigating between their frontend builder and Gutenberg carries the risk of breaking existing blocks within lessons because existing content loads in tinyMCE when you open a lesson in the frontend course builder. TutorPress, conversely, was created to avoid or resolve the many issues of Tutor LMS’s custom frontend builder, and to implement all the benefits that WordPress has to offer in a Gutenberg-based course builder.

     Having said that, if Tutor LMS changes a meta field name or completely reworks their Quiz endpoints (which is unlikely), we would, of course, need to update TutorPress accordingly. One of the biggest advantages of TutorPress is that it provides you with granular settings to configure how you build your courses, allowing you to choose when and where to use Gutenberg or Tutor LMS’s frontend course builder. A developer deciding to change a field name is very rare, but meta fields are often the only integration point in TutorPress and would be incredibly easy to adjust nonetheless.

     Themeum also occasionally adds more features to the frontend course builder, and as an addon for Tutor LMS, TutorPress will trail behind Tutor LMS when it does so. If you really want to use a new feature in Tutor LMS right away, you have access to their frontend course builder, but we will add those same features to Gutenberg when they mature. For instance, when the Content Bank feature first came out, there were lots of issues reported and missing features. Instead of adding it to Gutenberg right away at the risk of having to rework it, we waited until the Content Bank feature fully matured. Themeum also recently launched support for Certificates in Course Bundles. Both features are now on our roadmap and will be added soon. We are keeping close track of what is being added to the frontend course builder, and adding those same features to Gutenberg when it is the best time to do so.

     In conclusion, if something stops working in TutorPress after updating Tutor LMS, or you want to try a newly added feature, you have access to their frontend course builder while we address any such issues. If something stops working in Tutor LMS, it is unlikely to have anything to do with TutorPress.