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Sensei is Now Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses

We’ve just released a new version of Sensei that changes the name of the plugin to Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses.

You may see a strange version number (2.0.1.1.0.0) when prompted to update. This is due to the fact that Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses is a bundle of the free version of Sensei LMS that exists on WordPress.org, and the WooCommerce Paid Courses extension that enables selling courses with WooCommerce.

After updating, you will see Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses listed on the Plugins page:

If you currently have a valid Sensei license for your site, nothing changes with the release of Sensei with WooCommerce Paid Courses. Your existing plugin will continue to function as before, and you’ll still receive updates and support.

You can read more about why we made this change here.

What’s in this Release?

Here are the highlights of the release:

  • The new minimum required version of PHP is 5.6. If you’re not sure which version of PHP your site is running, you may find the How to Check Your WordPress Site’s PHP Version section of this article helpful. You can also read more about updating PHP on WordPress.org.
  • The new minimum required version of WooCommerce is 3.0.
  • The Access Permissions setting now controls only lesson content, not lesson and course content. Always displaying the content on the single course page is an opportunity to further promote a course and encourage user enrolment.
  • When Sensei is first activated, a pop-up appears asking you to join our mailing list. This pop-up will only appear on sites that have never had Sensei installed before.
  • We added a new Sensei LMS extensions page available from the Sensei LMS > Extensions menu.

You can read more about what else is in this release, including template file changes and deprecations, here and here.

Head over to Dashboard → Updates to update Sensei from within WordPress.

Please note: While we have thoroughly tested this release, it’s always possible that we’ve missed something. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site.

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Sensei LMS on WordPress.org

We’re very pleased to announce that Sensei LMS is now available on WordPress.org! 🙌

This is the free version of Sensei LMS (previously known as Sensei) that enables the creation of free online courses. Selling online courses is possible using the WooCommerce Paid Courses extension, which integrates with WooCommerce, WooCommerce Subscriptions and WooCommerce Memberships.

We hope that by making Sensei LMS available on WordPress.org, we are doing our part to democratize online learning!

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Sensei Share Your Grade 2.0

Sensei Share Your Grade 2.0 is now available! 🎉

Please note that Sensei Share Your Grade 2.0 requires a minimum Sensei version of 1.11.0 and a minimum PHP version of 5.6. If you are not running Sensei 1.11.0+ and PHP 5.6+, please update to more recent versions of both before updating Share Your Grade.

If you’re not sure which version of PHP your site is running, you may find the How to Check Your WordPress Site’s PHP Version section of this article helpful. You can also read more about updating PHP on WordPress.org.

What’s in this Release?

Here are the highlights of the Sensei Share Your Grade 2.0 release:

See what else is in this release.

Head over to Dashboard → Updates to update Sensei Share Your Grade from within WordPress.

As usual, if you spot any issues, please log them on Github.

Please note: While we have thoroughly tested this release, it’s always possible that we’ve missed something. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site.

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Sensei Course Participants 2.0

Sensei Course Participants 2.0 is now available! 🥳

Please note that Sensei Course Participants 2.0 requires a minimum Sensei version of 1.11.0 and a minimum PHP version of 5.6. If you are not running Sensei 1.11.0+ and PHP 5.6+, please update to more recent versions of both before updating Course Participants.

If you’re not sure which version of PHP your site is running, you may find the How to Check Your WordPress Site’s PHP Version section of this article helpful. You can also read more about updating PHP on WordPress.org.

What’s in this Release?

Here are the highlights of the Sensei Course Participants 2.0 release:

See what else is in this release.

Head over to Dashboard → Updates to update Sensei Course Participants from within WordPress.

As usual, if you spot any issues, please log them on Github.

Please note: While we have thoroughly tested this release, it’s always possible that we’ve missed something. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site.

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Sensei Certificates 2.0

Sensei Certificates 2.0 is now available! 🎊

Please note that Sensei Certificates 2.0 requires a minimum Sensei version of 1.11.0 and a minimum PHP version of 5.6. If you are not running Sensei 1.11.0+ and PHP 5.6+, please update to more recent versions of both before updating Certificates.

If you’re not sure which version of PHP your site is running, you may find the How to Check Your WordPress Site’s PHP Version section of this article helpful. You can also read more about updating PHP on WordPress.org.

What’s in this Release?

Here are the highlights of the Sensei Certificates 2.0 release:

See what else is in this release.

Head over to Dashboard → Updates to update Sensei Certificates from within WordPress.

As usual, if you spot any issues, please log them on Github.

Please note: While we have thoroughly tested this release, it’s always possible that we’ve missed something. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site.

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Sensei Course Progress 2.0

Sensei Course Progress 2.0 has just been released! 🎉

Please note that Sensei Course Progress 2.0 requires a minimum Sensei version of 1.11.0 and a minimum PHP version of 5.6. If you are not running Sensei 1.11.0+ and PHP 5.6+, please update to more recent versions of both before updating Course Progress.

If you’re not sure which version of PHP your site is running, you may find the How to Check Your WordPress Site’s PHP Version section of this article helpful. You can also read more about updating PHP on WordPress.org.

What’s in this Release?

Here are the highlights of the Sensei Course Progress 2.0 release:

See what else is in this release.

Head over to Dashboard → Updates to update Sensei Course Progress from within WordPress.

As usual, if you spot any issues, please log them on Github.

Please note: While we have thoroughly tested this release, it’s always possible that we’ve missed something. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site.

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Sensei Media Attachments 2.0

Sensei Media Attachments 2.0 is now available! 🥳

Please note that Sensei Media Attachments 2.0 requires a minimum Sensei version of 1.11.0 and a minimum PHP version of 5.6. If you are not running Sensei 1.11.0+ and PHP 5.6+, please update to more recent versions of both before updating Media Attachments.

If you’re not sure which version of PHP your site is running, you may find the How to Check Your WordPress Site’s PHP Version section of this article helpful. You can also read more about updating PHP on WordPress.org.

What’s in this Release?

Here are the highlights of the Sensei Media Attachments 2.0 release:

See what else is in this release.

Head over to Dashboard → Updates to update Sensei Media Attachments from within WordPress.

As usual, if you spot any issues, please log them on Github.

Please note: While we have thoroughly tested this release, it’s always possible that we’ve missed something. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site before updating your live site.

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Sensei LMS 2.0.1 Beta 1

The next beta, Sensei LMS 2.0.1 Beta 1, is ready for testing. It contains changes that rename the plugin from Sensei to Sensei LMS.

We recognize that the naming of this beta may be confusing. Given that Sensei 2.0 was made available prematurely on WordPress.org for a short period of time, we’ve had to rename the plugin from Sensei to Sensei LMS in order to prevent the same situation from happening again.

We’ve also bumped the version to 2.0.1, since technically Sensei 2.0.0 was briefly (albeit erroneously) released.

Template File Changes

  • All templates – Changed text domain from sensei to sensei-lms.
  • templates/emails/footer.php – Updated footer text.

Deprecated Hooks

  • manage_sensei_page_sensei_learners_sortable_columns has been deprecated in favour of manage_sensei-lms_page_sensei_learners_sortable_columns
  • manage_sensei_page_sensei_grading_sortable_columns has been deprecated in favour of manage_sensei-lms_page_sensei_grading_sortable_columns
  • manage_sensei_page_sensei_analysis_sortable_columns has been deprecated in favour of manage_sensei-lms_page_sensei_analysis_sortable_columns

Other Things to be Aware of

There are some additional things you should be aware of, particularly for developers:

  • The main plugin file has been renamed from sensei.php to sensei-lms.php.
  • Sensei LMS is now installed in the wp-content/plugins/sensei-lms directory.
  • The text domain has been changed to sensei-lms throughout the codebase.
  • The screen IDs for all subpages under the Sensei LMS menu have changed. If you are referencing screen IDs in any custom Sensei code, they will need to be updated.

You can download the beta here. Should you find any issues, please report them here in the comments or on Github. Thank you!

As this is a beta release, please test on a staging site and not your live site. If you don’t have a staging site, you can use the WP Staging plugin to create one.

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Premature Update for Sensei 2.0

Some of you may have seen an update prompt earlier this week that invited you to upgrade to Sensei 2.0. Choosing to update had the following consequences:

  • If you were selling courses, those courses would have been made available for free.
  • If you were using any Sensei extensions (with the exception of Content Drip), those extensions would have stopped working.
  • Sensei translations would have broken.

If your site was upgraded to Sensei 2.0, we strongly recommend that you downgrade to 1.12.3 to resolve the above issues. Choosing to remain on Sensei 2.0 means that your site will NOT receive updates for the plugin going forward. You can downgrade to Sensei 1.12.3 by downloading it from WooCommerce.com, deactivating Sensei 2.0, and installing/activating Sensei 1.12.3.

Why Did This Happen?

On Tuesday, April 2nd, 2019, we deployed a free version of Sensei to WordPress.org. Later in the day, we started receiving reports that Sensei wasn’t working correctly after updating to Sensei 2.0.

This was very concerning, as Sensei being deployed to WordPress.org should have had zero impact on our existing users. This is because existing sites with Sensei installed receive their plugin updates from WooCommerce.com, not WordPress.org, and so should not have had an update prompt displayed in the first place. Yet WordPress.org intercepted Sensei’s plugin update check, detected that a new version was available, and surfaced an update prompt on your site.

What Did We Do About It?

Once we received the first report of someone being asked to upgrade to Sensei 2.0, we contacted the plugin team at WordPress.org. Within 30 minutes of our being made aware of the problem, Sensei was removed from WordPress.org, and the update prompt was no longer displayed in the WordPress admin.

For those users who opened support tickets with us, we asked that they downgrade to Sensei 1.12.3.

How Will We Prevent This From Happening Again?

We have had some communication with the WordPress.org plugin team to determine why this happened.

It would seem that WordPress.org used a combination of Sensei’s name and author fields to identify it. This meant that when your site checked in with WordPress.org for plugin updates, WordPress.org compared the name and author fields of the version of Sensei that was installed on your site to the version that it had on its servers, found them to be the same, and pushed out a notice to update.

We were expecting WordPress.org to use the plugin slug for identification purposes. The plugin slug on WooCommerce.com (woothemes-sensei) was different from the plugin slug on WordPress.org (sensei). Had the slug been used to identify Sensei, this entire incident would have been avoided.

We are currently planning to resubmit Sensei to WordPress.org. However, we will be submitting it with a different plugin name – Sensei LMS. This will be enough to ensure that WordPress.org does not identify existing versions of Sensei as something that it is responsible for updating.

Questions?

Should you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them here. If you need help downgrading, please open a Support ticket and our Happiness Engineers will take good care of you.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused some of our users.

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Media Attachments 1.0.2 Fixes Issue with File Visibility

We’ve put out a small release to fix an issue with the visibility of media attachments. In 1.0.2, media attachments are only visible to people who are enrolled in the course.

We’ve also added a new sensei_media_attachments_show_media_links filter that can be used to override the display of media attachments.

Should you find any issues, please report them in the comments or on Github. Thank you!