WPLMS Batches – Much Ado About Nothing

[learner4life]

Hi, after having waited for 8 months for the WPLMS batches plugin to be released, I finally bought it and gave it a try last night. And boy, was I disappointed. No offense, your theme has worked very well for me so far, but the batches add on IS useless. For various reasons -

1. Different batches cannot have difference course curriculum: Refer to this thread from 8 months ago where you said this would be possible https://wplms.io/support/forums/topic/restarting-a-course/ This was sort of THE #1 REASON for WPLMS batches. Anyone providing live classes or instructor led classes will find it pretty useless without actually being able to give up to date content in each batch.
2. Unlike Course, the members, statistics etc cannot be hidden from the student.
3. Variable pricing for batches is not possible. Again defeats the purpose of having various batches.
4. Bugs for which the fixes are scattered all over but no stable update pushed https://wplms.io/support/knowledge-base/automatic-enroll-issue-in-batches-fix/ and https://wplms.io/support/knowledge-base/unable-to-add-members-from-back-end-group-edit-page/ and spelling mistakes etc

Some of these posts with a promise of "an update soon" are gathering dust. Would it be possible for you to make these changes/updates by this Sunday, June 12? At the very least, the ability to offer different curriculum to different batches. If not, I would request you to please refund my payment.  

[learner4life]

Three very important reasons to have the ability to offer different curriculum to different batches are:

1. We are into live classes. So each batch would technically have new content. The current Batches add-on doesn't solve this problem so we have to follow the old method of creating a new course for each batch. Which brings me to the second point;
2. Creating new courses for every new batch is TERRIBLE for SEO. Say for example, if a particular course got really popular among students and people started sharing the link over social media etc. All the digital footprint, and inbound referrals would become useless because a month later when the new batch starts, it will be a new course with new url.
3. I cannot just keep using the same course and change curriculum in each batch because my courses are 120 days long, but the new batch starts every 30 days. And I don't want to mix the lectures between two.

[Anshuman Sahu]

1. I agree that different curriculum feature should be in Batches plugin and we have tried to implement it but it needed change in architecture of theme and also code update in many plugins . So we are already working on the different curriculum feature implementation for batches plugin . So it would be available after 1 or 2 theme updates .Thanks for patience . 2. This feature is already requested by many of batches plugin users and we have noted these . This will be available in the next update of batches addon . 3. We are also going to implement Variable pricing in the next update of wplms woocommerce addon plugin update . Thanks for pointing this out . 4. And yes obviously these bug fixes would be available in the next update of batches addon plugin with the statistics and members hide feature . We are currently focusing on the next theme update version 2.1 which includes bug fixes majorly and after that our prime focus would be batches addon and wplms woocommerce plugin .

[learner4life]

Thanks for clarifying. As is obvious, the million dollar question then is - "When?" What is the ETA for all these features that your are working on? The very basic version of batches came out in 8 months, I can not even begin to imagine how much time would it take for features requiring architectural changes. Many other threads confirming these updates are already months old. So I would request you to please 1) give an eta for these features and 2) to refund the payment made. Would happily buy the plugin again when the promised features are made available.  

[learner4life]

Please try to understand that this is a business critical need for me. I had waited far too long  for the wplms batches and in a way because of this, messed up our SEO strategy big time. Unfortunately, I cannot wait any longer and need to decide whether WPLMS batches will save the day or should I find some solution. Maybe a work around - maybe a custom development. I can understand that you may have different priorities. But what if I could make some extra payment to incentivize development of WPLMS batches plugins and get it completed on a priority (say within in next 7-10 days). Would you consider doing it faster and by a fixed time? Not a trick question, I really mean it. It's just that my situation is really urgent and I need to either get this working or move on.  

[H.K. Latiyan]

Firstly, just because your requirement is not available does not mean the plugin is nothing. It still supports a lot of features and the response has been really great so far from other users. The main reason why this can not be implemented at this point is simply because we  need a different set course curriculum framework for batches. You want a drag drop framework for creating course curriculum in batches which in itself is very big requirement. Of course we have equally important feature requests raised by other users and we prioritise based on time and effort required for the feature. ps : If you're really short on time, you can outsource the drag drop framework for curriculum for batches then connecting it to WPLMS is a really easy thing and we can help you with that.

[learner4life]

Hi Latiyan, That I call it much ado about nothing, is an opinion. It can remain even if yours differ from mine. Two different opinions can co-exist. Refer to this thread: https://wplms.io/support/forums/topic/restarting-a-course/ where you guys indicated that different curriculums would be possible when the batches come out. Coming from that expectations, and after waiting for 8 months, when I tried  the WPLMS batches, it felt useless. Not sure what you mean by "You want a drag drop framework".. Way I imagined a batch was as a child post/page. All batches are individual courses within themselves, and the actual course page (or Course Home Page) acts as the the landing page with summation of data at parent level (such as total students enrolled, course reviews) and quick checks (such as continue course button takes you to the batch you are enrolled in). By all means this maybe an over simplifciation and you would know better. Just wanted to share my thoughts. I am also ready to outsource the work. Can you please give me some pointers to start and things to keep in mind while developing?

[learner4life]

Hi Latiyan, after beroding over it some more, I decided not to outsource because then in addition to customization, I would also have to continuously manage that branch and maintain compatibility. I am not equipped with the resourcws to do that. I would try to create a work around using current features and some manual intervention. I hope you would not discontinue the current feature set of batches. Look forward to that update. Thanks.

[Anshuman Sahu]

thanks for patience please track development here : https://trello.com/c/wCPqqt9b/652-different-curriculum-in-courses-in-different-batches

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