The Spotlightr platform is supported by LearnDash and their "Video Progression" feature. And with Spotlightr's Wordpress plugin, we make it even faster and easier to add your videos to LearnDash and it's Video Progression feature. We'll review how to do this with or without the plugin below.

First you must make sure your course is set to linear progression. Using this feature requires students to progress through each lesson, topic, and quiz sequentially, following the order in which they are presented, without skipping ahead. The alternative is “free form,” which allows students to navigate freely and access any lesson or topic throughout the course in any order. This setting can be configured as either “free form” or “linear” within the COURSE options.

These features only work for logged-in users. If your course access is set to “open,” meaning users do not need to register or log in to access the course, their activity cannot be tracked and progression features will not work. Therefore, when setting your course access, both linear progression and video progression will work with any access mode except “open.”

To add a Spotlightr video to Learndash using Video Progression, you can do so via the Spotlightr Wordpress plugin.

After installing the Spotlightr WP plugin, simply browse to the Lesson/Topic you wish to add your video to. Then enable video progression here:

After turning on Video Progression you will see an option to Use Spotlightr Video. Simply click on Select video:

You'll then see your folders with your videos. Any videos that are not in a folder will be in the Uncategorized folder:

Simply browse to your video, click on it, and then click the button to add it:

Configure your custom publishing options, if any, and then click on Publish Video:

The embed code will be automatically added to the Video URL field:

Important note: If the video controls are not visible, please turn them on in the Lesson Video Progression settings here: ​
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Let's now review some other options you have for video progression. We'll first start with the display timing and then the final 4 optional player settings:

Before completed sub-steps - This is the default setting. This means that the video will be shown right away and must be watched in completion before the student can access anything else related to the lesson, like topic or quizzes.

After completing sub-steps - This means that the video will be hidden from the student and till be visible after the student has completed any topics or quizzes related to the lesson. Once those are completed, the student will have access to the lesson video. Keep in mind that the student still has to complete the video in order to mark the lesson as complete.

What you decide to use here is completely up to how you have your course organized. Most people use the default setting, as they want the main Lesson video to be watched first and then followed up by the topics and/or quizzes.

This will start the video automatically when the page loads.

In general we do not recommend setting your videos to auto-play. However if you do require this, then we recommend this be done inside of your Spotlightr settings. We have a few features that LearnDash does not for auto-play.

Note that due to browser policies, if you set the video to auto-start then the video will start out muted. There will be an 'unmute' button on the player that the user must click in order to enable the audio of the video.

When you click that 'unmute' button the video video has already started, so you miss the audio of the first few seconds of the video. That's why one very popular Spotlightr feature resets the video to the beginning once the 'unmute' button is clicked.

Here is a demo video of how that works.

You can configure all of this inside the Project theme and all videos that have that theme applied will auto-start. You can find this feature inside of your Spotlightr Theme >> Player Settings >> Autoplay.

By default, when you enable autostart in LearnDash then the controls are removed by default. So what this 'Video Controls Display' setting does is it over-rides that and displays them if you want them displayed when autostart is enabled. LearnDash documentation claims that this only works with Youtube and local videos though, however we have found this also affects Spotlightr videos.

This feature is normally only used if the LearnDash Autostart feature is turned on. In general, we don't recommend you autoplay videos inside your course. If you do decide to autoplay, our recommendation is to configure that inside of Spotlightr to auto-play your videos. When done in Spotlightr we do not hide controls automatically so this setting is moot. We get into this more in our recommended settings at the end of this article.

The goal of this feature is to assist students in staying focused on the material and helping them to not skip any important parts of a video if they scroll the page or switch the page.

We call this feature SMART playback, and recommend configuring this inside of Spotlightr if you want this feature enabled.

It can be configured to pause the video when the students scrolls down away from the video and/or when the student goes to another browser tab or page.

You can find this feature in your Theme >> Player Settings >> Advanced >> SMART Playback.

If the student closes the tab/window and comes back at a later time, this feature will ensure that the video starts from where it left off.

Again, if you require this feature then we recommend setting this via your Spotlightr Project theme. This will ensure every video you add to that Project will have this setting enabled, so you don't have to enable every time you add a video.

Here's a demo video of how this works. Play the video and after 15 seconds or so refresh the page. When you play it again, the video will begin where you left off.

It can also be found in your Theme >> Player Settings >> Auto-Resume

To use Spotlightr and Learndash without the Spotlightr Wordpress plugin you will need to use our Advanced Embed code.

In your Publish options, navigate to Advanced Options and then enable Advanced Code. Then click to copy the code:

Then paste it into the Video URL field in LearnDash:

Should you use video progression? — the drawbacks, and which settings we recommend leaving to Spotlightr rather than LearnDash.

Spotlightr and Wordpress - Get more info on how Spotlightr works with all Wordpress installation.