WPLMS Theme Review

WPLMS is a premium WordPress template designed by the Vibe Themes author to suit any education website. Over twenty plugins, pre-made demos, and dedicated features are ready to help you build any college, university, kindergarten or training center platform. With WPLMS you will be able to create special systems for both students & teachers and ease the online learning exchange.

Design

The WPLMS theme is a responsive and retina ready WordPress Learning Management System. If I should have to choose a single word to describe this theme, the perfect one is versatile. You can set up many different theme skins that change the website’s visual appearance from default, to minimal, elegant, or modern. Besides, you can use the boxed or full-width version of the theme to display your content.

When you are uploading the WPLMS .zip file, you are welcomed by a wizard setup where you can choose the features you need or want to install on your website like plugins, pages, updates, style (demo), content, design and then, test your new site. This system allows you to decide to import or not the pages, posts, events, settings, sliders, and plugins used with the pre-built demo. In addition, there are six child theme demos.

With the WPLMS theme, you can create pages and posts using various elements brought by plugins and add-ons. For example, if you are trying to build a new page, you can use the EventOn shortcode generator, the Visual Composer, the Vibe Page Builder, or add a BadgeOS Shortcode, or upload a .zip file.

You can create pages using a custom drag and drop plugin called Vibe Page Builder.
If you are used to building pages with Visual Composer than you’ll be glad to know that the theme comes with all the essential elements shortcodes, and page templates from the Visual Composer plugin. You can also use one of the nine formats, Vibe shortcodes, and the additional options to create a new post.

You can customize the above the fold area look using a generic, sleek, transparent, or other header styles and upload a logo to the header section, for both mobile and desktop screens. Also, you can make this section sticky, and decide how the navigation search behaves.

As for the bottom section, you can divide the footer area into up to four columns or set one of the four pre-made styles. So, you can display your website’s logo, copyright text, the menu, and the favorite social icons.

All the online courses can be managed globally from the Course Manager tab in the backend panel. One of the interesting features is that you can set up a counter for each course visit, and choose from seven block styles for study classes.

Functionality

You can find all the WPLMS settings on the backend, structured onto the Vibe Options Panel, in 13 submenus. You can customize your website on the frontend as well, using the Live Customizer, where you can manage menu locations, global colors, typography, theme skin, layout, header & footer and more.

WPLMS comes bundled with the drag and drop WP Bakery product, and also the custom Vibe Page Builder. This gives you the power to create pages on backend or frontend with ease, using templates, events, shortcodes and extra settings. The Vibe Page Builder plugin is based on a 1-4 column system and brings you various modular blocks and a particular set of options.

The WPLMS template comes with 12 sidebar places where you can include over 30 custom widgets. You can use social widgets, organizational or educational ones. The theme is bundled with 14 free and premium plugins, like bbPress, Buddy Drive, Layer Slider, BadgeOS, Visual Composer and so much more. Also, the theme comes with other 11 custom plugins: Vibe Course Module, Custom Types, Shortcodes, WPLMS Assignments, CoAuthor Plus, Customizer Plugin, Dashboard, Front End and MyCred. Besides, the theme is compatible with the WPML.

The Vibe Themes author explains on their website how WPLMS will help a student or an instructor:

Student

• Browse course: course directory, rating/reviews, free units, pre-required course
• Purchase course: combo/single, one-time payment, coupons, subscriptions
• Start course: audio/video, finish units, timeline & duration, attachments
• Discuss course: course & unit forums, course groups, private/mass message, private/public forums
• Take quiz: timer, question types (MCQ, SCQ, text, essay), auto message & results, auto/manual evaluation
• Complete course: completion certificate, check results, course stats, excellence badge.

Instructor

• Create course: set badges/certificates, create sections/units, connect forums/groups
• Create quiz: question bank, audio/video/image questions, set timer, single/multiple choice/small text/essay question types
• Sell course: set price, enable subscriptions, set pre requisite course, sell products combos
• Teach course: course groups, unit forums, private/mass message, private/public forums
• Evaluate: quiz timer, question types (MCQ, SCQ, text, essay), auto message & results, auto/manual evaluation
• Complete course: completion certificate, course stats, results check, excellence badge.

Performance

We have tested WPLMS default demo on different page speed tests, and it loads at high speed.

Downsides

You can use custom fonts only if you have some CSS skills. The author produced a tutorial to help you but it is not an easy task for a WordPress beginner.

If you want to receive automatic updates, note that you have to enter your Themeforest credentials and a generated Envato API key into the Options Panel.

The theme documentation and knowledge base are not so intuitive, and it might be difficult for a beginner to figure out where to find the information on a specific query.