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Quick start ​

Tip: The Sikshya admin is one big app with a sidebar. Use Your WordPress admin (Sikshya) if you’re not sure where Courses, Sales, or Addons live.

This walkthrough takes you from a freshly activated Sikshya plugin to a published, sellable course in under an hour. We recommend doing it on a staging site, then re-doing it on production once you're happy.

Overview ​

Here's what you'll do:

  1. Run the Setup wizard (5 minutes).
  2. Confirm WordPress permalinks are set up.
  3. Connect a payment method (or skip for now if you only sell free courses).
  4. Build and publish your first course.
  5. Make a test purchase.
  6. Verify the learner experience.

Step 1 — Run the setup wizard ​

After you activate Sikshya for the first time, you'll see a notice prompting you to Run the setup wizard. The wizard has 5 small steps:

  1. Welcome — optionally tick "Help improve Sikshya by sharing anonymous usage data." This is opt-in and never collects learner personal information.
  2. Pages — Sikshya creates the pages it needs (Cart, Checkout, Student account, Learning area, Order receipt). You can keep the defaults or pick existing pages.
  3. Currency — pick your currency (USD, EUR, INR, NPR, etc.), symbol position, and decimal options. There's a live preview showing how prices will look.
  4. Lesson links — choose Stable (recommended) for SEO-friendly URLs, or Shorter URL for compact links.
  5. Finish — review the summary. You can also click Add sample course here to seed one course, one lesson, and one quiz so you have something to play with.
Want to re-run the wizard later? Open Sikshya → Tools → Maintenance → Open setup wizard. It's non-destructive — already saved settings stay in place.

Sikshya needs WordPress to use pretty permalinks. Open Settings → Permalinks and make sure Plain is not selected. Pick Post name if you're not sure.

Click Save Changes even if you didn't change anything — saving flushes the rewrite rules so all of Sikshya's URLs work.

After this, these URLs should resolve on the front of your site:

URLWhat it shows
/courses/Public course catalog
/cart/Cart page
/checkout/Checkout page
/my-learning/Learner account / "My courses"
/learn/Learn hub (after enrolling)
/login/Sikshya login form

You can rename any of these slugs later in Sikshya → Settings → Permalinks.

Step 3 — Connect a payment method ​

If your courses are free, skip to Step 4. Otherwise:

  1. Open Sikshya → Settings → Payment.
  2. Tick Enable PayPal (the free plugin's primary gateway).
  3. Choose the integration mode (Simple for IPN-only with just an email, or Advanced (REST) for full webhook support).
  4. Paste your Client ID, Secret, and (for REST) Webhook ID from the PayPal developer dashboard.
  5. Tick Test mode (sandbox) for now.
  6. Click Save.
PRONeed Stripe, Razorpay, Mollie, Paystack, Square, Authorize.Net, or Bank Transfer?

These gateways are part of Sikshya Pro. You'll see them listed in Settings → Payment with a PRO badge — enabling them requires an active Pro license.

Compare Pro plans →

The full gateway-by-gateway guide lives on the Payments page.

Step 4 — Build your first course ​

Now the fun part.

  1. Click Sikshya → Courses, then click + Add new course in the top right.
  2. The Course Builder opens with four tabs across the top: Course details, Pricing & access, Curriculum, Course options.
  3. On the Course details tab, type a Course title, a one-line Short teaser, and a Full description. Pick a Primary category, set a Difficulty level, and upload a Featured image.
  4. On the Pricing & access tab, choose Free Course or Paid Course and set the price. Leave Who can sign up? at Open for now.
  5. On the Curriculum tab, click + Add chapter, give it a name like "Introduction", then click + Add lesson inside. Pick Text lesson and add a few paragraphs.
  6. Add a Quiz next to the lesson — even one multiple-choice question is enough to test the flow.
  7. Click Publish in the top right.

Open the course URL in a private browser window (so you're not signed in as admin). You should see the public course page with an Enroll or Buy button.

Step 5 — Make a test purchase ​

While in your private window:

  1. Click Enroll (free) or Buy (paid).
  2. Sikshya's checkout opens. If you're not signed in, you'll see fields to create a learner account inline.
  3. For paid: pay with your gateway's test card / sandbox account.
  4. You should land on the Order confirmation page.

Back in the admin:

  • Open Sikshya → Sales → Orders — the order should be Paid.
  • Open Sikshya → People → Enrollments — the test learner should be enrolled.
  • Check email — the Welcome / enrollment and Receipt templates should have arrived.

Step 6 — Verify the learner experience ​

Still as the test learner:

  1. Open /my-learning/ — the course should be in My courses.
  2. Click Start learning → the lesson opens in the learn player with a curriculum sidebar on the left.
  3. Click Mark complete at the bottom of the lesson — progress bumps to 1 of N.
  4. Take the quiz, pass it, finish the course.
  5. The certificate should appear under My learning → Certificates.

That's a working LMS.

  • Add a discount code under Sikshya → Commerce → Coupons to test the discount flow.
  • Connect a real transactional email service (SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun) — wp_mail() alone is unreliable for production. See Email & notifications.
PRODrip courses for cohorts and paced programs

Want to release lessons by date, X-days-after-enrollment, or per cohort instead of "complete in order"? That's the Content drip add-on.

Upgrade to Sikshya Pro →