The enrollment flow for students depends on the course settings, and whether the course is linked to a product or not.
No Self-enrollment
If you enable the Don’t allow self-enrollment option in the Course Settings, then students can’t enroll themselves in a course, and it must be done manually by an administrator or course teacher. Learn more.
Open Access
If you enable the Open Access option in the Course Settings, then anyone can take the course as a Guest Student without signing up.
Users can enroll in Open Access courses by visiting the course page and clicking Take Course.
Access will be granted immediately, and the student can begin taking the course without registering. Progress will be tracked via a session cookie. Learn more about Open Access.
Free Courses
If you don’t enable Open Access, but the course is not linked to a product, then anyone can enroll in the course, but they will have to register first.
Students can enroll in a free course by visiting the course page and clicking Take Course.
If they are already logged in, they will be enrolled in the course immediately, otherwise, they will be taken to the My Courses page, where they can log in or register.
After logging in or registering, they will be redirected to the course page, where they can click Start Course to enroll in the course.
Note: A free course can also be set up by linking a course to a free product. In this case students will enroll by ‘purchasing’ the free course, as if it were a paid course.
Paid Courses
If a course is linked to a WooCommerce product, students can enroll by purchasing the course.
From the course page, click the Buy button:
Then continue to complete the purchase. Once the associated order status is Processing or Completed, the student will be enrolled in the course and can start taking it from the course page or the My Courses page.
Testing the enrollment flow
Viewing your site while logged in as an admin won’t give you a true representation of what your students see. To test the enrollment flow, it’s best to create a test student account.
Create a test student account
Log out of your admin account and sign up as a student on the My Courses page, to create a new test student account. (You can alternatively create a new ‘Subscriber’ account via Users > Add New User, but it’s a good idea to test your site’s registration flow too).
You can then use this account to test the enrollment flow for courses on your site.
Note: If you just want to see how your course/lesson content appears for students, you can use the Preview as Student feature.
