Escape Creative

Dave Warfel

<p>LearnDash is a powerful learning management system (LMS) for managing your online courses, but there are some areas where the design falls short. In order to provide your students with an exceptional learning experience, you need a professional design.</p>
<h3>Enter Design Upgrade for LearnDash</h3>
<p>Design Upgrade for LearnDash completely redesigns every aspect of LearnDash so that it closely resembles your existing WordPress theme. No settings or custom code. Just activate & enjoy!</p>
<h3>Compatible with LD3 & “Legacy” Templates</h3>
<p>We’ll automatically detect whether you’re using the “LearnDash 3.0” or “Legacy” template, and assign styles appropriately. If you’re still running LearnDash 2.x, all of the same design upgrades that you’ve always enjoyed will still be there.</p>
<p>See below for a list of what’s new.</p>
<h3>Features</h3>
<p>Tested with LearnDash 4.3.0.2</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>NEW:</strong> Improved styles for the new LearnDash registration process/page</li>
<li><strong>Global:</strong> Larger clickable areas for all course content, navigation & Focus Mode areas</li>
<li><strong>Buttons:</strong> All buttons have matching rounded corners & increased font size</li>
<li><strong>Font Sizes:</strong> These will now be inherited from your theme, which should increase your font sizes across the board</li>
<li><strong>Focus Mode:</strong> Improved sidebar tray design, Course Sections, shadow added to mobile menu, collapse arrow flips to show current menu state, and more.</li>
<li><strong>Focus Mode:</strong> Top navigation bar received several small improvements</li>
<li><strong>Focus Mode:</strong> Improved styles for Focus Mode comments, which were added in LearnDash 3.1</li>
<li><strong>Animations:</strong> Subtle animations for LearnDash tooltips & the Focus Mode top menu</li>
<li><strong>Profile:</strong> Several styles were improved & standardized</li>
<li><strong>Login/Registration:</strong> Unified styles for all form fields</li>
<li><strong>Course Grid:</strong> Equal height columns & other small tweaks</li>
<li><strong>WisdmLabs Ratings, Reviews & Feedback</strong> design upgrades</li>
<li>Design improvements for WisdmLabs’ LearnDash Group Registration plugin</li>
<li>Improved print styles</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Also:</strong> Small tweaks were made to assignments, pagination, the “User Status” widget and more.</p>
<p><strong>LearnDash 2.x “Legacy” Features</strong></p>
<p>Tested with LearnDash 2.6.6. <strong>We no longer support these features and highly recommend using the LearnDash 3.0 active template.</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Much improved course grid styles, equal height cards & no more weird spacing issues 👍</li>
<li>All fonts have been reset to use your theme’s default font family, size & color</li>
<li>All PNG icons have been replaced with comparable SVGs</li>
<li>All complete/incomplete icons for lesson/topic/quiz lists have been moved to the right for better consistency</li>
<li>Spacing around & between elements has been adjusted to provide greater consistency throughout</li>
<li>All LearnDash widgets now have more consistent spacing & sizing, including improvements to Course Info & Course Navigation</li>
<li>Styling for the <code>[ld_profile]</code> shortcode has been completely revamped</li>
<li>Completely revamped & restyled quiz elements 💯</li>
<li>Improved design of the statistics modal window (for quizzes), including row highlights on hover</li>
<li>Larger pager navigation buttons to improve usability</li>
<li>Full support for RTL languages</li>
</ul>
<h3>Who is this for?</h3>
<p><strong>Brand new LearnDash users:</strong> There is absolutely no reason not to try it out. At the very least, it will give your site a more consistent design. If you plan to customize LearnDash further, you can still do so using a child theme or Additional CSS in the Customizer.</p>
<p><strong>Seasoned LearnDash veterans:</strong> If you have not made any customizations to your LearnDash design, but would like to improve it, give us a shot. You might want to try it out on a test site first, but you can deactivate it with one click and return to your previous design.</p>
<p>You might also want to give your students a heads up that you’re updating the design. But we feel confident that they’ll like it 🙂</p>
<p><strong>LearnDash developers:</strong> If you’re a developer who builds LearnDash sites for your clients, this could save you hours (maybe even days) of development time. LearnDash’s markup & CSS is a beast to customize. This will give you a much easier baseline to work with.</p>
<p>We designed the plugin to be just specific enough to override LearnDash’s default styles, but not so specific that you’ll need to use a ton of selectors to override our specifity. All CSS in child themes and Additional CSS will take precedence over our styles.</p>
<h3>Pro Version</h3>
<p><strong>Need custom styles?</strong> Our <a href="https://escapecreative.com/products/design-upgrade-learndash/?utm_source=wordpress.org&utm_medium=free%20plugin&utm_campaign=readme" rel="nofollow ugc">pro version</a> uses the Customizer to bring you <strong>over 110 customizable design options.</strong> Completely customize your LearnDash site with just a few clicks.</p>
<p><span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe loading="lazy" class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hOUToX87U9E?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe></span></p>
<h4>Pro Features</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Achievements Add-On:</strong> 10 new customization options</li>
<li>Show/Hide various course & profile features</li>
<li>Disable expand/collapse links & show all by default</li>
<li><strong>Course Content Lists:</strong> Update background & text colors, hover effects, customize line separators, remove the list count numbers and more</li>
<li><strong>Progress Bar:</strong> Customize the color, border radius & height, add stripes, and animate the bar on page load</li>
<li><strong>Buttons:</strong> Add your own background & text colors</li>
<li><strong><code>[ld_profile]</code>:</strong> Avatar shape, custom “edit profile” link, hide profile info, hide quiz information, and more</li>
<li><strong>Login/Registration Popup:</strong> 10+ design options</li>
<li><strong>Focus Mode:</strong> 20+ design options, including 7 for Focus Mode comments</li>
<li><strong>Course Navigation Widget:</strong> 15+ design options</li>
<li><strong>Course Grid Add-On:</strong> 20+ design options</li>
<li><strong>Alerts:</strong> 9 custom colors, plus a few other options</li>
<li><strong>Tooltips:</strong> customize the background & text color</li>
<li><strong>Uncanny Groups:</strong> buttons, border radius & improved styles are applied to many Uncanny Groups frontend elements</li>
<li><strong>Tin Canny Reporting:</strong> 12 design options for Tin Canny reports on the front-end</li>
</ul>
<p><strong><a href="https://escapecreative.com/products/design-upgrade-learndash/?utm_source=wordpress.org&utm_medium=free%20plugin&utm_campaign=readme" rel="nofollow ugc">Upgrade to Pro Today »</a></strong></p>
<h3>Theme Compatibility</h3>
<p>Design Upgrade for LearnDash <strong>should work on most themes</strong>, assuming they have not customized the LearnDash markup in any way. While we can’t guarantee full compatibility, we have tested with the following themes.</p>
<h4>Tested With</h4>
<p>We have tested with the following themes, and they all appear <strong>to be compatible:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Astra</li>
<li>Divi</li>
<li>GeneratePress</li>
<li>eLumine (when using the “LearnDash 3.0” active template or eLumine’s “Elementary Layouts”)</li>
<li>LearnMate</li>
<li>Edufire</li>
<li>Neve</li>
<li>OceanWP</li>
</ul>
<h4>Incompatible Themes</h4>
<ul>
<li>BuddyBoss Platform (released June 2019)</li>
<li>Boss. / Social Learner (If you deactivate the “Boss for LearnDash” plugin, it will still work in “Legacy” mode)</li>
<li>eLumine (when using the “Legacy” active template or any version of LearnDash before 3.0)</li>
</ul>
<h4>Incompatible Plugins</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>LearnDash Visual Customizer by SnapOrbital:</strong> The Visual Customizer takes a similar approach to designing LearnDash components, and thus the code conflicts with ours.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Uncanny Owl Toolkit Compatibility</h3>
<p>We recognize the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/uncanny-learndash-toolkit/" rel="ugc">Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit</a> by Uncanny Owl is a popular LearnDash plugin that adds some nice features. We’re in the process of making our plugin fully compatible with theirs. Here’s where we are so far:</p>
<ul>
<li>Reset Progress button: Button styles upgraded</li>
<li>Simple Course Timer modal: Button styles upgraded</li>
<li><code>[uo_dashboard]</code>: Styles upgraded</li>
<li><code>[uo_courses]</code>: Styles upgraded</li>
<li><code>[uo_breadcrumbs]</code>: Compatible; Considering upgrades</li>
<li><code>[uo_lessons_topics_grid]</code>: Compatible; Considering upgrades</li>
<li><code>[uo_login_ui]</code>: Compatible; Considering upgrades</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>NOTE:</strong> Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit styles are only upgraded if you’re using the “LearnDash 3.0” active template. Styles do not apply to the “Legacy” template.</p>
<h3>Plugin Compatibility</h3>
<h4>Ratings, Reviews & Feedback plugin by WisdmLabs</h4>
<p>As of version 2.5, we now enhance the styles of the Ratings, Reviews & Feedback plugin by WisdmLabs. For a detailed overview, please see our <a href="https://ldx.design/design-upgrade-wisdmlabs-ratings-reviews" rel="nofollow ugc">article on ldx.design</a>.</p>
<h4>Group Registration plugin by WisdmLabs</h4>
<p>As of version 2.6, we now enhance the styles of the Group Registration plugin by WisdmLabs. General design improvements will be made to all frontend elements output by the <code>[wdm_group_users]</code> shortcode.</p>
<h3>Browser Support</h3>
<p>A few techniques we use to improve the LearnDash design are only supported in the latest versions of major browsers. For the most part, as long as you’re <strong>not</strong> using Internet Explorer, most (if not all) of our plugin’s design upgrades will work.</p>
<p>We support the latest versions of the following browsers:</p>
<ul>
<li>Google Chrome</li>
<li>Mozilla Firefox</li>
<li>Apple Safari</li>
<li>Microsoft Edge</li>
<li>Chrome for Android</li>
<li>Firefox for Android</li>
<li>iOS Safari (not tested, but should work)</li>
</ul>
<p>We <strong>do not</strong> support any version of Internet Explorer, however, we do offer a few code snippets & suggestions to fix a few issues in IE11. See the IE11 section below in FAQ.</p>
<h3>Roadmap</h3>
<p>As LearnDash adds new features, it is our goal to keep this plugin updated.</p>
<p>Features planned for future release:</p>
<ul>
<li>New features for the Quiz Reporting Extension by WisdmLabs</li>
<li>Compatibility with more Uncanny LearnDash Toolkit modules</li>
</ul>
<h4>We’d love to hear from you!</h4>
<p>Does something look weird with your theme? Is there something we missed? Wouldn’t it be cool if…</p>
<p>We tested it on a handful of popular themes, but we couldn’t possibly cover them all. If you have any feedback, please let us know in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/design-upgrade-learndash" rel="ugc">support forum</a>.</p>
<h4>Credits</h4>
<ul>
<li>Paint brush icon made by <a href="http://www.freepik.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Freepik</a>, courtesy of <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">flaticon.com</a>. Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/" rel="nofollow ugc">CC3.0 BY</a>.</li>
<li>Gradient by <a href="https://colorfulgradients.tumblr.com/post/155121898640/colorful-gradient-43352" rel="nofollow ugc">colorful gradients</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>From within WordPress</h3>
<ol>
<li>Visit “Plugins > Add New”</li>
<li>Search for “Design Upgrade for LearnDash”</li>
<li>Click the “Install” button</li>
<li>Click the “Activate” button</li>
<li>There are no settings to configure. An improved design will automatically be applied to all LearnDash elements on your site.</li>
</ol>


Design Upgrade for LearnDash

Instantly improve LearnDash's design -- focus mode, course content, profile page, course navigation & course grid -- to more closely match yo …

Thomas Lloancy

<p>ConnectSphere transforms your online courses with video, audio, chat, and screen-sharing sessions via WebRTC. It features a modern, secure, and optimized interface for up to 100 participants.</p>
<p><strong>Key features:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Video, audio, public and private chat, screen sharing</li>
<li>Raise Hand button — participants can signal the host during live sessions</li>
<li>Live participant counter</li>
<li>Connection quality indicator (signal bars based on RTT and packet loss)</li>
<li>Dark and Light color themes — choose the one that fits your site design</li>
<li>Leave button — cleanly stops camera/mic and releases all WebRTC resources</li>
<li>Creating a room automatically joins it — no extra click needed</li>
<li>Configurable STUN/TURN servers for optimal connectivity behind NAT and firewalls</li>
<li>Fully translatable (i18n-ready, French translation included)</li>
</ul>
<h3>Compatibility</h3>
<ul>
<li>Tested up to WordPress 7.0.</li>
</ul>
<h3>New Features</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Participant counter</strong>: The participants panel now shows a live count of people in the room.</li>
<li><strong>Raise Hand</strong>: New button lets participants signal the host. A hand icon (✋) appears on the video bubble and in the participant list for all attendees.</li>
<li><strong>Connection quality indicator</strong>: Three-bar signal indicator in the control bar, powered by WebRTC <code>getStats()</code> (RTT + packet loss).</li>
<li><strong>Light theme</strong>: New color theme option in Settings > ConnectSphere > Room Appearance. Dark (default) or Light — with a live preview in the settings page.</li>
<li><strong>Leave button</strong>: Cleanly stops camera/mic tracks, releases all WebRTC handles, and resets the room state. Previously, leaving was only possible by closing the tab.</li>
<li><strong>Auto-join after create</strong>: Creating a room now immediately joins it. No need to click “Join” separately.</li>
</ul>
<h3>UX & Architecture</h3>
<ul>
<li>Status ticker now spans full width below the control buttons, no longer squeezed to a few pixels.</li>
<li>Join logic extracted into <code>performJoin()</code> to eliminate duplicated code between the Create and Join flows.</li>
<li>Professional Janus server installation service documented in FAQ and admin settings page.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Bug Fixes & i18n</h3>
<ul>
<li>Fixed missing <code>load_plugin_textdomain()</code> — PHP-side translations now load correctly.</li>
<li>Fixed broken ICE retry paths that referenced undeclared <code>videoroomHandle</code> / <code>textroomHandle</code> variables (now correctly using <code>videoroom</code> / <code>textroom</code>).</li>
<li>Fixed notification sound using a site-root absolute path; now uses the correct plugin URL via <code>connectSphere.plugin_url</code>.</li>
<li>Removed dead <code>wp_ajax_connectsphere_join_room</code> registration (endpoint was never called from the front-end).</li>
<li>Fixed PHP fatal error risk: apostrophe inside single-quoted string in capabilities check.</li>
<li>All remaining hard-coded French strings in PHP and JS replaced with English base strings wrapped in i18n functions.</li>
<li>Added missing CSS classes: <code>.unread-badge</code>, <code>.new-message-highlight</code>, <code>.disabled</code>, <code>.hand-raised</code>.</li>
<li><code>plugin_url</code> added to localized JS data; removed unused <code>ajax_url</code> / <code>nonce</code>.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.5.0</h4>
<p>(2026-04-25)</p>
<h3>User Experience & Admin Ergonomics</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Shortcode Quick-Copy</strong>: Added a dedicated “Usage” section in the settings page featuring a one-click copy button for the <code>[connectsphere_room]</code> shortcode.</li>
<li><strong>Copy Feedback</strong>: Integrated a visual “Copied!” confirmation using WordPress native Dashicons for a better user experience.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Internal Logic & i18n</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>JS Dependency Update</strong>: Added <code>sprintf</code> to the <code>wp-i18n</code> imports in <code>connectsphere.js</code> to support complex dynamic translations.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.4.0 (2026-04-24)</h4>
<h3>Internationalization (i18n) & Localization</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Full Multilingual Support</strong>: Added <code>Domain Path</code> for native translation.</li>
<li><strong>wp-i18n Integration</strong>: Scripts now explicitly depend on <code>wp-i18n</code> for secure string translation.</li>
<li><strong>String Standardization</strong>: All UI messages harmonized to English for global compatibility.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Improved Resilience & Performance</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Aggressive Reconnection Logic</strong>: Reduced reconnection timeouts from 15 seconds to <strong>4 seconds</strong> for both <code>videoroom</code> and <code>textroom</code> plugins. This ensures much faster recovery after network drops.</li>
<li><strong>Enhanced Connection Stability</strong>: Refined the Janus initialization flow to handle session drops more proactively.</li>
<li><strong>Version Bump</strong>: Updated to 1.4.0 to force cache refreshing for all assets.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.3.1 (2026-04-24)</h4>
<h3>Sécurité & Stabilité</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Renforcement de la sécurité (Nonce)</strong> : Correction de la faille de vérification des jetons de sécurité dans l’administration. Désormais, les réglages sont protégés par <code>check_admin_referer</code> pour prévenir les attaques CSRF.</li>
<li><strong>Optimisation du chargement des scripts</strong> : Les fichiers JS (Janus, adapter.js) et CSS ne sont plus chargés sur tout le site. Ils sont désormais injectés uniquement sur les pages utilisant le shortcode <code>[connectsphere_room]</code>, améliorant drastiquement les performances du site.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Interface & Responsive</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Full Responsive Design</strong> : Refonte complète du CSS pour mobile et tablette. La grille vidéo et la barre de contrôle s’adaptent désormais parfaitement aux petits écrans.</li>
<li><strong>Z-Index Fix</strong> : Ajustement de la profondeur de l’interface pour garantir la visibilité des menus de navigation WordPress au-dessus du salon vidéo.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.3.0 (2026-04-23)</h4>
<h3>UI Overhaul, Ad-Free & CSS Refactoring</h3>
<ul>
<li><strong>Removed all integrated advertisements</strong>: Banners and marketing popups are now gone for a 100% professional experience.</li>
<li><strong>New Activity Log Ticker</strong>: Replaced intrusive “Toast” notifications with a sleek, terminal-style status bar in the control panel.</li>
<li><strong>Cyber-Terminal Aesthetics</strong>: Implemented scrolling marquee effects for system messages to prevent blocking the video grid.</li>
<li><strong>CSS Refactoring</strong>: Completely reorganized the stylesheet. Cleaned up legacy notification styles and unminified key components for better maintainability.</li>
<li><strong>Layout Stabilization</strong>: Fixed the 100vw horizontal overflow bug and optimized control bar responsiveness using modern Flexbox.</li>
<li><strong>Cleanup</strong>: Removed unused DOM manipulation logic from the JS core to improve performance.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.2.0</h4>
<h3>Enhanced screen-sharing support with explicit media direction</h3>
<ul>
<li>Replaced generic <code>media: { audio: true, video: true }</code> with precise recvonly settings.</li>
<li>Now explicitly sets <code>audioRecv: true</code> and <code>videoRecv: true</code> while disabling local capture.</li>
<li>Ensures compatibility with system audio during screen sharing.</li>
<li>Follows Janus Gateway’s recommended pattern for subscriber answer creation. </li>
</ul>
<h4>1.1.0</h4>
<ul>
<li>6.9 Ok</li>
<li>A little too much advertisings </li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.9</h4>
<ul>
<li>Fixed textroom error (error_code: 422) by adding a 500ms delay for the join request and handling specific retries.</li>
<li>Improved connection management with a 30-second keep-alive interval and progressive retry delays (15s, 30s, 60s).</li>
<li>Public messages are now visible to all participants with username, date, time, and content.</li>
<li>Resolved connection errors (DTLS alert, ICE disconnected) with better handle management.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.8</h4>
<ul>
<li>Fixed textroom errors (error_code: 415) for join and message requests by using textroom.data() to send via the WebRTC data channel.</li>
<li>Public messages are now visible to all participants with username, date, time, and content.</li>
<li>Improved connection error handling (DTLS alert, connection loss) with 15-second reconnection delays.</li>
<li>Resolved PeerConnection errors (error_code: 416) by properly detaching handles.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.7</h4>
<ul>
<li>Fixed textroom errors (error_code: 415) for join and message requests by using the correct format (textroom: ‘join’, textroom: ‘message’).</li>
<li>Public messages are now visible to all participants with username, date, time, and content.</li>
<li>Improved connection error handling (DTLS alert, connection loss) with increased reconnection delays to 15 seconds.</li>
<li>Resolved PeerConnection errors (error_code: 416) by properly detaching handles.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.6</h4>
<ul>
<li>Fixed chat issue: public messages are now visible to all participants with username, date, time, and content.</li>
<li>Resolved textroom errors (error_code: 413) by correcting the format of join and message requests.</li>
<li>Improved connection error handling (DTLS alert, connection loss).</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.5</h4>
<ul>
<li>Fixed PHP syntax error in connectsphere.php (line 84).</li>
<li>Improved message handling to include username, date, time, and content.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.4</h4>
<ul>
<li>Fixed chat issue: public messages are now visible to all with username, date, time, and content.</li>
<li>Improved message styles for better readability.</li>
<li>Fixed textroom connection errors (error_code: 415).</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.3</h4>
<ul>
<li>Fixed chat styling for a dark icy background and improved text readability.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.2</h4>
<ul>
<li>Added specific CSS styles for the settings page (admin.php?page=connectsphere).</li>
<li>Added dynamic resizing of input fields.</li>
<li>Fixed issue with CSS styles not applying on the settings page.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.1</h4>
<ul>
<li>Added STUN/TURN server configuration in settings.</li>
<li>Improved settings interface with an icy blue theme.</li>
<li>Added an animated background with connected spheres.</li>
</ul>
<h4>1.0.0</h4>
<ul>
<li>Initial release with WebRTC, chat, and integrated marketing.</li>
</ul>


ConnectSphere

ConnectSphere transforms your online courses with video, audio, chat, and screen-sharing sessions via WebRTC. With proper configured Janus server.

Design Upgrade for LearnDash vs ConnectSphere