If you’re using LearnDash with Astra and feeling constrained by its default setup, you’re not alone.
The good news? You can fully customize LearnDash courses using Astra, unlocking a whole new level of flexibility and personalization.
But why should you bother customizing your LearnDash courses? And how far can Astra take you when it comes to design and functionality?
In this article, we’ll dive into the benefits of customizing LearnDash and explore the impressive customization options Astra brings to the table.
Let’s jump in!
What is LearnDash & Astra?
Before diving into how to customize LearnDash courses using Astra, let’s first understand what these tools bring to the table.
If you’re already familiar with LearnDash, feel free to skip ahead.
What is LearnDash?
LearnDash is a robust WordPress plugin that transforms your website into a fully functional Learning Management System (LMS)1. With its extensive add-ons and customizability, it has become the go-to solution for individual course creators, companies, and educational institutions.
You might wonder—how can a WordPress plugin function as a complete LMS?
Here’s why it works: Unlike other LMS platforms that rely on exclusive servers and proprietary software (often driving up costs), LearnDash operates seamlessly within WordPress. Its free version allows you to kick-start your e-learning journey without hefty upfront expenses, while paid options unlock advanced features for scaling your courses.
Need an all-in-one hosting solution? Explore LearnDash Cloud here.
Now that you’re up to speed with LearnDash, let’s talk about Astra.
What is Astra?
Astra is a premium WordPress theme2 that offers vibrant, customizable templates for creating beautiful, high-performance websites. Whether you’re a blogger, entrepreneur, or beauty store owner, Astra provides pre-built designs to suit every need—all while ensuring your site is optimized for speed and usability.
But here’s the exciting part: LearnDash and Astra have joined forces to make building an e-learning website easier than ever3. Their integration empowers you to create a visually appealing and fully optimized platform with just a few clicks, so you can focus on what truly matters—creating valuable content for your learners.
Why Do You Need To Customize?
If Astra provides the best themes for LearnDash, why bother customizing your course?
If you’re asking this question, you’re not alone.
While Astra offers best themes for LearnDash courses, those templates often need adjustments to meet professional standards and align with your unique needs. Simply put, customization is the key to transforming a basic template into a polished and engaging learning experience.
Take a look at a default LearnDash course page powered by Astra templates.

Does something feel off?
It likely resembles a blog more than a professional course. This can appear unprofessional to your learners and might even harm your reputation as a course creator. That’s why personalizing your best WordPress theme for LearnDash is essential—it helps establish your e-learning identity and stand out from the competition.
Here are the top reasons LearnDash customization with Astra:
- Improve Brand Consistency
Building a brand means more than just offering great content—it’s about creating a cohesive identity. With a pre-built template, staying consistent can be challenging. By customizing fonts, layouts, and colors, you ensure that your course reflects your brand’s personality and reinforces its identity in every detail. - Create a Better Learning Experience
A customized course enhances the learner’s experience. Imagine offering a default LearnDash course with no customization—it lacks engagement and memorability. By tailoring your course’s design and functionality, you can create an immersive, seamless experience that learners will enjoy and remember. - Achieve Professional Layouts
As a course creator, professionalism matters. A default Astra theme with LearnDash integration that looks more like a blog can undermine your credibility. Customizing your LearnDash course allows you to design polished, professional layouts that reflect your expertise and build trust with your learners.
But what if you’re not a coder or tech-savvy?
That’s where Astra comes in. Not only does Astra provide the best LearnDash themes, but it also offers user-friendly AstraPro features for LearnDash —no coding required.
Let’s explore how LearnDash customization with Astra helps you create a standout e-learning experience.
Read More: How To Setup Astra With LearnDash? Astra And LearnDash Setup Guide
How To Customize Your LearnDash Course Using Astra?
Astra starter templates for LearnDash are undeniably aesthetic, giving you a visually appealing website right out of the box4. However, many course creators feel the need to customize these best LearnDash themes further—whether to enhance functionality or achieve a more professional and branded look.
If you’re new to LearnDash and using Astra, don’t worry! Customizing your courses is simpler than it might seem.
Here’s our LearnDash Astra theme tutorial.
Customize Look & Feel of Your LearnDash Course Using Astra
The Look & Feel LearnDash customization with Astra focuses on adjusting the visual design elements of your LearnDash course, using Astra’s customization options. Astra offers an intuitive interface for styling your course pages, lessons, and quizzes, ensuring your online learning platform matches your brand identity.
What You Can Customize:
Typography:

Astra lets you adjust fonts for different elements, such as headers, body text, and buttons. You can apply custom fonts across your course pages to ensure they align with your brand’s typography style. This is key for maintaining a professional and cohesive look.
Colors:

Through Astra’s Customizer, you can set colors for primary and secondary buttons, backgrounds, text, and links. Customizing colors helps reinforce your brand identity and ensures that your LearnDash courses are visually appealing and easy to read.
Spacing and Padding:

Adjusting the spacing between elements like course titles, lesson descriptions, and buttons ensures a clean, readable layout. Astra provides easy-to-use controls for spacing without needing custom CSS, allowing you to fine-tune your course presentation.
Backgrounds:

You can change the background images or colors for your course pages and individual lessons. Customizing backgrounds is essential for creating a visually appealing learning environment that keeps learners engaged.
By tweaking the look & feel of your LearnDash course, you can instantly enhance the aesthetic appeal and user experience. Astra’s visual customizations allow you to do this without touching any code, making it accessible for everyone.
Customize Layout of Your LearnDash Course Using Astra
The layout is one of the most significant aspects of your LearnDash course, as it impacts both the user experience and course navigation. Astra offers extensive LearnDash course layout customization options, allowing you to have a LearnDash course design with Astra that suits your needs and preferences.
What You Can Customize:
Header Layout:

Astra allows you to change the layout of the header, offering options like full-width, boxed, or transparent headers. You can modify this to create a clean and engaging navigation area for learners. You can also hide or display elements like the site title or tagline based on your course needs.
Sidebar Position:

You can choose whether to have a sidebar on the left, right, or no sidebar at all. For LearnDash courses, you may prefer a clean layout without a sidebar to allow more focus on the course content. Astra makes it easy to control the sidebar placement.
Footer Layout:

Astra also enables customization of the footer. You can choose the number of footer widgets, add custom widgets like recent courses or testimonials, and customize the footer’s layout to match your brand.
With LearnDash course layout customization, you can control the structure and overall user experience of your LearnDash courses, ensuring they are easy to navigate and aligned with your course objectives.
Customized Layouts Hooks

Custom Layout Hooks are an advanced feature of Astra that provide extra flexibility for creating customized layouts. These hooks allow you to add custom elements, such as banners, course navigation buttons, or specific content, at specific points throughout your LearnDash course pages.
What You Can Customize:
- Positioning Elements:
Astra provides hooks in various places such as before the course content, after the course content, or in the footer. By using these hooks, you can inject custom elements into your LearnDash course without modifying the core code. For example, you can add a course progress bar at the top of each lesson page or add a custom call-to-action (CTA) button at the bottom. - Custom Widgets and Shortcodes:
Using Astra’s hooks, you can place custom widgets for shortcodes, such as forms or testimonials, directly on your LearnDash course pages. This enhances the content without having to change the main layout of your course. - Advanced Design Flexibility:
Custom Layout Hooks are useful when you want to introduce specific elements that enhance the learning experience, such as a sidebar with additional course resources or a live chat button for learner support.
To implement custom layout hooks, you’ll need a bit of development knowledge (or help from a LearnDash custom development expert) to add the right hooks in the desired locations.
Astra Settings (Granularly)

Astra allows you to customize your site and LearnDash pages granularly using the Customizer. This approach is especially useful when you want to apply specific changes to individual pages or courses, instead of making site-wide modifications.
What You Can Customize:
- Page-Specific Settings:
With Astra, you can modify the layout and settings for specific pages, including LearnDash courses. This allows you to have different styles for your course pages, lesson pages, or quizzes, ensuring each part of your course is tailored to your needs. - LearnDash Course Settings:
If you want your course page to have a different layout, header, or color scheme than the rest of your site, Astra allows you to adjust settings individually for LearnDash course pages. This granular customization can be done through the Astra Customizer where you select “Pages” and choose the specific course page or lesson for which you want to apply changes. - Header and Footer for Specific Pages:
Granular settings also allow you to define whether you want to show the site header and footer for specific LearnDash pages. For instance, you may want to remove the header or footer on lesson pages for a cleaner look, while keeping it on your main course page.
This granular control ensures that you can deliver a unique and consistent experience for your users without impacting the design of the entire site.
Using Astra Options To Customize Your LearnDash Course

Astra’s Options feature provides a global way to manage key settings for your LearnDash courses and other pages on your website (Only available with Astrapro features for LearnDash). This section is useful for applying broad changes to the look and functionality of your course platform without needing to modify every individual page.
What You Can Customize:
- Global Typography and Colors:
Astra Options allows you to define the global typography and color scheme for your entire website. This is especially useful when you want consistency in font styles and color usage across your LearnDash course content and the rest of the site. - Layout Settings:
You can apply global layout settings for all LearnDash pages, such as enabling a boxed layout, adjusting the site width, or configuring the position of sidebars. This simplifies the process of ensuring that your entire course platform has a unified structure. - Global Header and Footer:
Astra Options also lets you set up a global header and footer LearnDash course design with Astra that will be applied across all pages, including LearnDash pages. For example, you can choose to add navigation menus, logos, and custom branding in your header, while also applying the same footer across all courses for consistency. - Course Layout Integration:
If you’re using Astra theme LearnDash integration, the Astra Options panel allows you to integrate LearnDash-specific settings into your global layout options. This ensures that course pages, lessons, and quizzes are styled consistently while giving you the flexibility to customize specific elements.
By leveraging these Astra options, you can create a LearnDash course site that is not only visually appealing but also optimized for functionality and ease of use, making it easier for your learners to navigate and engage with your content.
Transform Your LearnDash Courses with Astra – Customization Made Easy with TeknoFlair
Unlock the full potential of your LearnDash courses with TeknoFlair’s expert customization services using Astra.
Whether you want to enhance the visual appeal, streamline the layout, or add advanced features, we specialize in tailoring every aspect of your course to fit your unique brand and objectives.
Don’t settle for a one-size-fits-all template—let us help you create a personalized, professional learning platform that stands out.
Reach out to TeknoFlair today and take your e-learning experience to the next level!
Final Thoughts
Customizing your LearnDash courses with Astra through our LearnDash Astra theme tutorial opens up a world of possibilities to enhance both design and functionality. Astra’s user-friendly customization tools allow you to effortlessly modify fonts, colors, layouts, and more, ensuring your courses reflect your brand and provide a seamless learning experience.
Whether you’re looking to improve visual appeal or streamline navigation, Astra’s flexibility ensures that your courses stand out from the default Astra starter templates for LearnDash and deliver a polished, professional feel.
By investing time into customization, you not only improve the aesthetic of your courses but also create an engaging environment that fosters a better learning experience. The combination of LearnDash and Astra provides everything you need to build a standout e-learning platform—without the need for coding expertise.
Resources:
FAQs
Can I customize LearnDash courses using Astra without coding?
Yes, LearnDash customization with Astra has easy-to-use interface that allows you to have LearnDash course layout customization, colors, typography, and more without needing to write any code. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, you can simply create a LearnDash course design with Astra.
Will Astra’s customization features slow down my LearnDash site?
No, Astra is built for performance. The theme is lightweight and optimized for speed, ensuring that even with LearnDash customization with Astra, your LearnDash site will load quickly and function smoothly. Astra is designed to enhance the user experience without compromising website performance.
Can I use Astra with any LearnDash add-ons?
Yes, Astra is fully compatible with all LearnDash add-ons. Whether you’re using additional features for quizzes, assignments, or certificates, Astra ensures that all functionality works seamlessly together to provide a smooth, integrated e-learning experience.However, if you want to extend further, you should check AstraPro features for LearnDash.
Expand your LearnDash functionality with powerful add-ons like:
Is Astra’s customization accessible for non-technical users?
Absolutely! You can customize LearnDash courses using Astra as they are designed to be user-friendly, so you don’t need to be a developer to make changes. The theme provides an intuitive interface where you can adjust layouts, fonts, colors, and more with just a few clicks.
Can I change the layout of individual LearnDash course pages?
Yes, LearnDash course layout customization is possible for each LearnDash course page individually. You can adjust the header, sidebar position, and footer for specific courses or lessons to tailor the look and feel of each part of your site without affecting the rest of the pages.