Ever faced a dilemma of securing your course from pirates?
Yes, the pirates are real and they do surely exist even in this digital era.
The only difference is that pirates from the 18th century were looming in seas but these pirates which we are referring to are on the internet and their only aim is to steal what you have made with so much hardwork and dedication.
In this situation, you would feel that you have full-proof security to prevent them from stealing your course contents.
But the caution shouldn’t be just for these pirates, there are thieves who are looking to use your bandwidth for their own good. And, there are also some students who wish to get their hands on your course without paying a penny!
If these are all the issues that you’re currently troubled with, you need to worry any more if your course is built with LearnDash LMS for WordPress!
Do you want to know why?
Well, along with all awesome and ready-to-be added features offered by LearnDash, they also do offer premium content security with their Integrity add-on.
Feeling excited?
Then stay tuned as we get in the depth of how the integrity add-on can improve the security of your LearnDash course content. This guide will not explain what’s LearnDash integrity add-on but also how to set-up integrity in your LMS WordPress website.
What Is The Integrity Add-On?
Before we get into how you can set-up the integrity add-on in your LearnDash LMS to add an advanced layer of security for your course content, it’s important to understand what it is and the benefits it can provide.
So, what’s the integrity add-on? Is it an external software that you might need to install?
No, that’s not the case.
It’s a simple LearnDash plugin, which by the way is free and provides various functionalities to ensure that your course content is not being abused by digital pirates or students. These functionalities include:
Hotlink protection
Concurrent logins
Security from copied content
Not just that, the integrity plugin also adds an extra layer of security for your course content with their native reCAPTCHA integration for LearnDash login and registration forms. This will help you prevent any spam or bot attack aiming to damage your LearnDash website with fake traffic.
The integrity plugin not only secures your course content but also provides a relief in a way that you won’t have to spend hard-earned money for integrating third-party and expensive plugins.
So, enough about what this plugin offers, we know that you’re curious about how to set-it up and configure it so that you can protect your LearnDash course content without even wasting a second.
So, here we go!
In the next section we will cover the above mentioned features in great detail along with how to configure them, so keep reading.
How To Install LearnDash Integrity plugin?
You might think that you would need to code shit out of your WordPress website to install the Integrity plugin, but it’s not.
Instead, installing this most important plugin is as easy as pie, all you need is a basic knowledge of navigating through your WordPress dashboard.
So, there are basically 2 methods to get this amazing integrity plugin installed on your LearnDash LMS and we will cover both of them.
Method#1 – The Easiest Way!
Note: To install the integrity plugin using this method, you need to have an active license of LearnDash LMS.
Step#1 – Open your WordPress admin area.
Step#2 – In the WordPress dashboard, navigate to LearnDash LMS > Add-ons.
Step#3 – Scroll down and look for the “Integrity Add-On”.
Step#4 – Click “Install Now”.
Step#5 – Activate the plugin.
And, boom! Your course content is now protected from digital thieves!
See how easy it was to add an extra-layer of security to your LearnDash course content.
But, in case you don’t have the active license for your LearnDash LMS, there is another method that can help you install the integrity plugin within minutes.
Method#2 – The Little Technical Method
What if you don’t have access to the active license of LearnDash LMS, you might worry if you can get your hands on these amazing features. But worry not, as there is another way to install this plugin and it would require some basic knowledge of installing plugins manually on WordPress.
Step#1 – At first you need to download a ZIP file (compressed file) from LearnDash’s official website.
Note: Remember, only to download from a trusted source such as LearnDash’s official website.
Step#2 – Open your WordPress admin area and navigate to PLUGINS > ADD NEW.
Step#3 – Click “Upload plugin” to extract the ZIP file that you downloaded earlier.
Step#4- Click “Install Now” .
Step#5 – Click “Activate Plugin”
See, this method wasn’t even very difficult, but if you feel like stucking at some point, leave a message in the comment below and hopefully our experts will contact you for instant support.
Now, we have installed the plugin, it’s time to understand how to configure it-up to protect your LearnDash course content.
How To Set-up the Integrity Plugin
So, you have successfully installed the integrity plugin, congratulations!
It’s time to understand how to set-it up to protect your course content!
To congfigure this plugin, first you need to access it through your LearnDash LMS dashboard.
For this, you will have to navigate to LearnDash LMS > Settings and click on the integrity tab.
In the integrity page, you will find a lot of functions that can be enabled/disabled only by toggling the switch.
Let’s understand each feature in-detail and how it can benefit your online course content.
Prevent Hotlinking
This is the first-most and important feature that you will find in the integrity page. As mentioned previously, the pirates are active on the internet and they’re looking for ways to damage your server for their benefits. Their top-notch way of doing this is by hotlinking. It’s a way to steal a server’s bandwidth by linking directly to your website’s assets such as images and videos.
Why do they do it?
For various reasons, but the most important reason is to ensure that your server is being used even if an image is being shown on your website. Imagine, how much load will your server have to bear if it has to use your resources to load an image or video on someone else’s website.
But with this LearnDash integrity security feature, you can prevent that.
Concurrent Logins
This might not be serious as it sounds but this is important if you have put hard-work in creating your online course on LearnDash. We know that teaching someone for free is a humble act but doing it without your knowledge might hurt you a bit.
However, it’s quite popular nowadays as people have turned to the internet to learn the latest skills to get successful in this fast-paced world, but not everyone wishes to pay for it or might not be able to pay for it.
So, to bypass the payment option, your existing users might share the user-access to other people without your knowledge.
But with the help of the concurrent login feature of LearnDash Integrity, you can avoid this to occur by prompting notifications whenever there are multiple login attempts from the same user-id.
Of-course, you might need to exclude concurrent login to prompt the same notification for your team, so, it also provides a way to exclude certain users to get this error. Also, you can restrict this feature to show error on per user basis.
How to enable this?
Visit their WP profile in your wordpress admin area and scroll down to find an option to bypass the concurrent login lockout.
Copied Content
If you’re tired of third-party learning services providers from copying your content and presenting it as their own, then this feature is specifically from you. With this feature, you can stop disabling the functionality to copy and paste along with the entire capability of the user to right click for any purpose.
Bonus point:
There may be instances where you want to allow copy-paste, such as in text boxes where disabling it could negatively impact the user experience. In such cases, you can selectively disable the LearnDash Integrity Add-on on specific pages using the FreeSoul Deactivate Plugins, allowing for greater flexibility and control.
ReCAPTCHA
This is the last feature that this plugin offers and it’s important to be integrated in your WordPress website featured by LearnDash LMS.
With this feature you can keep bots and users with malicious intent away from your learndash course content website.
But before your set-this feature up, it’s important to understand that you will get 2 options when you enable this plugin:
reCAPTCHA v2
reCAPTCHA v3
While both of these have the same security protocols , reCAPTCHA v3 is the last and more intelligent option to have and you will have to enable any 1 of them. We would prefer to have reCAPTCHA v3 installed as it has a confidence score which it measures by looking at your previous history, network status, and location.
Here’s how to set-it up:
Since the reCAPTCHA is offered by Google, you will have to register your website on Google to get the site keys if you want to activate this feature on your wordpress LMS registration or login page.
You can do it by simply following these 2 steps:
Open your Google Account to associate with the website.
After acquiring the site key, you will have to enable this feature on the LMS Integrity and choose either one of reCAPTCH variants.
Bottom Line
The LearnDash Integrity Add-on is an essential tool for course creators looking to safeguard their valuable content from digital pirates and unauthorized access. By integrating features like hotlink protection, concurrent login prevention, copied content blocking, and reCAPTCHA, this plugin provides a robust layer of security without the need for expensive third-party solutions. Installing and configuring the Integrity Add-on is simple, ensuring that your course remains protected while allowing you to focus on delivering quality education to your students.
