Film School releasesself-updates

Lightweight WordPress course platform for Prize Foundation's "How to Make a Film" content and future courses.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.4+, PHP 8.0+
• Advanced Custom Fields Pro
• Gravity Forms, Elite or Nonprofit license (for the Quiz Add-On)

An admin notice appears on any wp-admin screen if either dependency isn't active.

Setup

1. Install & activate — upload the film-school folder to wp-content/plugins/, then activate it from Plugins. This creates the wp_film_school_quiz_attempts table, registers the Student role, and grants Administrators the unlock_all_lessons capability.
2. Flush permalinks — visit Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes (no need to change anything). Required once after activation for /courses/, lesson, and unit URLs to work. Also required after any plugin file update that isn't a fresh activation — register_activation_hook only fires on the deactivated→activated transition, not on an overwritten file, so a manual permalink save is the reliable way to pick up rewrite changes.
3. Build a course — add a Course (Film School → Courses). Add Units if the course needs sections, or skip straight to Lessons for a flat course — set each lesson's Parent Course (and Parent Unit, if used) and Lesson Order.
4. Add a quiz (optional) — build a Pass/Fail-graded quiz under Forms, then link it to a lesson via that lesson's Quiz field.
5. Add students — Users → Add New, with role set to Student. Film School → Students is a shortcut to the Users list pre-filtered to that role.
6. Restrict a course (optional) — create a Group (Film School → Groups), add student members, then set that course's Restricted To Groups field. Leave it empty to keep a course open to everyone.
7. Build the front end in Elementor:
   • Lesson template (Theme Builder → Single, Post Type: Lesson) — drop in [lesson_quiz] and [course_sidebar].
   • Course archive (Theme Builder → Archive, Post Type: Course) — a Loop Grid widget on "Current Query" already reflects each student's access, no shortcode needed.
   • A student profile page (a normal Page, e.g. /my-progress/) — [student_progress_summary], [student_quiz_history], and [student_assignments].

Content model

• Course — top-level offering (e.g. "How to Make a Film", "Learning to Drive")
• Unit — optional grouping of lessons within a course. Skip entirely for a flat, short course.
• Lesson — always belongs to a course (parent_course); belongs to a unit (parent_unit) only if the course uses them.

All three are registered as non-hierarchical post types — the relationships live in ACF Post Object fields, not post_parent, since a lesson needs to point at either a course or a unit depending on the course's structure.

Lesson gating

Set a lesson's Requires Completion Of field to lock it until the selected prerequisite lesson is marked complete for that user. Leave it blank for the first lesson in a sequence. Users with the unlock_all_lessons capability (administrators, by default) bypass this — add the capability to an instructor/teacher role once that's defined.

Gating requires a logged-in user; anonymous visitors are redirected to log in.

Quizzes

Quizzes are built entirely in Forms (Gravity Forms) using the Quiz Add-On, graded Pass/Fail. Link a quiz to a lesson via the lesson's Quiz field. On submission, the result is recorded in wp_film_school_quiz_attempts and — if passed — marks the lesson complete, which unlocks anything gated behind it. Letter-graded quizzes aren't read (no gquiz_is_pass value) — keep quiz forms set to Pass/Fail grading.

Assignments

Lessons have an optional Assignment field group — a WYSIWYG Instructions field, an Attachment file field for a downloadable worksheet/template, and a Link URL field for an external resource. All three are plain ACF fields with no PHP behind them, so wire them into the lesson template with Elementor's native Dynamic Content (Text Editor widget for Instructions, a File/Button widget for Attachment, a Button widget's Link control for Link) rather than a shortcode — same as any other ACF field. Use a Display Condition ("assignment_instructions is not empty") to hide the section entirely on lessons with no assignment, same pattern as the Quiz section.

A separate Recap field group holds What We Accomplished, another optional WYSIWYG field for summarizing what the lesson covered. Same deal — wire it in with Dynamic Content, no shortcode.

Student profile page

Build this as a regular Page (not a Theme Builder template) — [student_progress_summary], [student_quiz_history], and [student_assignments] all key off the logged-in user, not off whatever post is being viewed, so there's nothing for a template's Display Condition to target.

Any page containing [student_progress_summary] is auto-detected and guarded: an anonymous visitor is redirected to whatever page you've set under Film School → Settings ("Login Required Page") rather than seeing a login prompt or 404 — build that page with your own messaging (e.g. "You haven't started any courses yet — start learning today" with a link to the course archive). If no page is set there, it falls back to the site homepage.

Admin list tables

Courses, Units, and Lessons all have their Date column hidden by default (still available via Screen Options — this only changes the default, not what's possible) and relational columns showing how each item fits into the hierarchy: Lessons show Course and Unit, Courses show Public Course (Yes/No), Units show Parent Course and Unit Order. Course, Unit, and Unit Order are all Quick-Editable — no need to open the full edit screen just to reassign or renumber. Course and Unit also support Bulk Edit (select multiple lessons, choose Edit from Bulk Actions) with a "No Change" default so applying it across a batch doesn't silently overwrite a field nobody touched — saved via a dedicated AJAX call (ajax_bulk_edit_lessons) rather than save_post, since WordPress's native bulk-edit save only calls wp_update_post() (which is what fires save_post) when one of WordPress's own recognized fields also changes; a bulk edit touching only our custom fields can otherwise be silently skipped entirely. The Course column is sortable — this required an actual SQL join to the courses themselves so it sorts by the course's title, not just the raw ID stored on the lesson, scoped tightly enough that it never affects any other query on the site. Note Course and Unit aren't cross-filtered in Quick/Bulk Edit (picking a Course doesn't narrow the Unit dropdown), matching the main lesson edit screen's own fields, which don't filter either. The submenu labels themselves read "Courses" / "Units" / "Lessons" rather than WordPress's default "All Courses" / etc.

Shortcodes

[lesson_quiz] and [course_sidebar] check is_singular('lesson') and render nothing anywhere else, including Course and Unit templates. The three student_* shortcodes aren't tied to a post type — they only require a logged-in user, so they belong on a standalone profile page rather than a template.

Grade Book

Film School → Grade Book — a course-scoped roster of every student-role user: lessons completed, quiz pass/fail counts, last activity, with a click-through to a per-student lesson-by-lesson breakdown. A second dropdown filters the roster to a specific Group's members. Quiz numbers come from wp_film_school_quiz_attempts; lesson completion is computed from user meta per-student rather than in one query — fine at nonprofit-course-platform scale, worth revisiting if that grows an order of magnitude.

Roles

The plugin registers a Student role (read capability only). Students are redirected out of wp-admin and don't see the admin bar — this is a course site for them, not a dashboard.

Dashboard

The main Film School page uses native WP meta boxes (draggable/collapsible, same system as the post-edit screens): an "About" box explaining the content model, a student enrollment count, and a top-5 "Overachievers" leaderboard by total lessons completed.

Groups

Groups are a plugin CPT (Film School → Groups), each with a Members field listing Student users — a student can belong to more than one group. Courses get a matching Restricted To Groups field: leave it empty and the course is open to every student (the default); add one or more groups and only their members can access it.

Group restriction is enforced at the same gate lesson prerequisites go through (is_lesson_locked()), so a locked-by-group lesson behaves identically to a locked-by-prerequisite one everywhere — the sidebar lock icon, the redirect on direct access, and [student_progress_summary].

Public courses

A course's Public Course field opens it up with no login required — overrides Restricted To Groups entirely. Because there's no logged-in user to track state for, this also switches off prerequisite gating and progress tracking for that course's lessons: [course_sidebar] still renders for anonymous visitors, but drops to plain links with no checkmarks or locks (nothing to check off), while [lesson_quiz] still renders and the quiz can still be taken anonymously — the score just isn't saved anywhere. Public is an all-or-nothing switch per course, not "public but still tracked."

Course archive

course has has_archive => true, so /courses/ exists automatically. Its main query is filtered (pre_get_posts) down to whatever the current visitor can access — public courses for anyone, plus (once logged in) unrestricted or group-assigned ones. Anonymous visitors no longer get redirected away from the archive itself; they just see whatever's public.

A Lesson Count Dynamic Tag (group: Film School) is available on any widget's Dynamic Content — inside a Loop Item on the course archive, it outputs how many lessons the current Course has. It's a real Elementor Dynamic Tag, not a shortcode, since it's a single computed value rather than markup — use it directly in a Text/Heading widget the same way you'd use an ACF field's dynamic tag.

A second tag, First Lesson URL (same group), resolves the current Course's first lesson — its first unit's first lesson if the course uses units, otherwise the first lesson directly under the course. Use it in a Button widget's Link field for a "Start Course" button on a Loop Item.

A third, Logout URL (same group), outputs wp_logout_url() — use it in a Button widget's Link field for a "Log Out" button, e.g. on the student profile page.

Automatic updates

Film School isn't listed on wordpress.org, so it ships with Plugin Update Checker (vendored at includes/plugin-update-checker/), pointed at this repo's GitHub Releases. This is what makes "Update available" and the native "Update Now" button show up on a client site's Plugins page — no manual re-upload/replace needed.

Cutting a release:

1. Bump the Version header in film-school.php (and FILM_SCHOOL_VERSION) to match the new tag.
2. On GitHub, draft a new Release from main and tag it (e.g. v1.0.4).
3. Publish it with a title and changelog. No zip needs to be built or attached — when a release has no matching zip asset, the update checker falls back to GitHub's own auto-generated source zip for the tag, which installs correctly since the repo root already matches the plugin's file layout. Attaching a named zip asset (e.g. film-school.zip) still works if one is ever needed — a matching asset takes priority over the fallback.

Installed sites will see the update within ~12 hours (WordPress's normal update-check cadence), or immediately if an admin clicks "Check again" on the Updates screen. From there it's a normal one-click "Update Now". Auto-updates are not enabled by default — an admin can turn on "Enable auto-updates" for Film School from that site's Plugins page to apply releases unattended.

Not yet built

• Self-service enrollment / open course catalog — intentionally deferred
• Instructor/teacher role and SSO bridge to the existing portal
• Migration of Matrix LMS content (client is copy-pasting manually — no import tooling needed)