Fixing and Extending a Third-Party Courses Plugin

The Challenge

Holistic Register bought a Courses Plugin from another developer for their Brilliant Directories site. The plugin had bugs that blocked members from progressing through lessons, and it did not support how the client wanted free public courses to work. Visitors could not start self-study CPD courses without creating an account, course progress could get stuck on locked lessons, and member profiles had no way to showcase a professional's published courses. Everything still had to work with the existing Stripe checkout, membership permissions, and course builder.

The Solution

We debugged the purchased plugin and extended it so courses work reliably for guests, members, and course creators on Holistic Register:

1. Lesson Progress Bug Fix

   We traced a SQL issue where lesson publish status was overwriting user progress in query results. That left lessons stuck as locked even when members had already started them. We fixed the queries with explicit column aliases so publish flags and user progress stay separate across the course landing and lesson pages.

2. Free Public Courses for Visitors

   We added guest mode for free public courses. Visitors can browse, start, and move through lessons without signing up or joining the directory. Progress is tracked in a browser cookie instead of the database. Logged-in members on free courses get the same open navigation, while paid courses still use sequential lesson locking.

3. Courses Tab on Member Profiles

   We modified the member profile tabs template so a Courses tab appears automatically when a member has published courses. A new show-courses-in-tabs widget lists their courses with the same design as the public library, professor brand colors, and smart action buttons for owners, enrolled users, and visitors.

4. Checkout and Stripe Improvements

   We stabilized the checkout flow with Stripe Payment Intents and Stripe Connect commission support. The checkout page now uses each instructor's brand colors with a contrast fallback so buttons stay readable on light themes. Free course enrollment creates the same lesson progress records as a paid purchase.

5. Public Course Library Updates

   We updated the general courses library so it handles logged-in users, guests, and enrolled students consistently. Course cards show lesson, video, file, quiz, and duration previews, and buttons change based on context: Buy Now, Start course, Learn More, Continue, or Completed.

Technical Implementation Notes

Most of the work was PHP customization inside Brilliant Directories on top of an existing third-party Courses Plugin. Changes touched course landing pages, lesson pages, checkout, Stripe Connect, member profile tabs, admin settings, and a new profile widget. Guest progress uses cookies and JavaScript; logged-in progress uses the plugin's existing database tables.