Move my courses off GrassBlade and WordPress
A GrassBlade setup looks like one thing and is three. LearnDash holds the shape of your courses. The teaching itself sits inside SCORM or xAPI packages, which GrassBlade exists to play. And the record of who did what goes to a separate tracking store that neither of the other two owns.
Everything works while all three keep paying. The trouble starts when you want to leave, because no single export gives you your course back.
The three parts, and where each one goes
Structure comes out of LearnDash. Its own export tool gives up the whole library: courses, modules, lessons, sub-lessons, ordering and worksheets, all of which bernard reads directly (Move my courses off LearnDash or WordPress covers that half in full).
Teaching comes out of the packages. These are separate files, and they are not inside the LearnDash export. A lesson that was played by GrassBlade arrives from the export showing the shortcode that called the package, not the teaching. That is deliberate: it is left visible and counted in the report so you can see precisely which lessons are waiting on their content, rather than finding empty lessons months later. Send the packages too and they are unpacked into the right lessons (Move my SCORM or xAPI course out of an LMS, or Move my Articulate Storyline or Rise course onto my own site if they were published out of Storyline or Rise).
Tracking stays where it is. The completions and scores GrassBlade reported live in a tracking store, and no route brings them across. If that history matters to you, get it out before anything lapses.
Do this before the renewal, not after
The two things you cannot get back are the LearnDash export and the package files. Both need the site up and the licences live. Pull them while everything is still running, and the renewal becomes a choice rather than a cliff.
- Export from LearnDash using its own Import/Export screen, not WordPress's general export.
- Collect the packages GrassBlade plays, one per lesson that used one.
- Export any learner records you need from the tracking store.
- Send all of it over. The courses get rebuilt as private drafts, with a report naming anything that could not be carried (Understand how a course is put together).
- Review and publish when you are happy (Add a lesson to my course).
What you stop paying for
The usual GrassBlade estate is a course plugin, a player plugin, a page builder, sometimes a form or checkout plugin, and hosting underneath all of it. Each renews on its own date. Once the courses live on your own site, that whole stack retires together - and the courses become pages search engines can read, which the sealed packages never were (What bernard improves automatically when it moves your site).
The prompt
“My WordPress courses use LearnDash with GrassBlade playing SCORM packages. I can export from LearnDash and I have the packages - what else do you need to rebuild them on my site?”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- Is GrassBlade the thing my courses are actually stored in?
- No, and this is the part that surprises people. GrassBlade is a player. Your course structure lives in LearnDash, your actual teaching lives inside SCORM or xAPI packages that GrassBlade plays, and your learner tracking lives somewhere else again. Moving means collecting all three, and the drafts that result are approved by you before publishing.
- If I only send the LearnDash export, what do I get?
- A correct skeleton with holes in it. Every course, module and lesson arrives in the right order with the right titles, but any lesson whose content was a played package arrives showing the shortcode that called it rather than the teaching itself. Those lessons are counted and listed in the report, so you can see exactly which ones still need their package.
- Do my learners' records come across?
- No. GrassBlade reports completions and scores to a separate tracking store, and that history stays there. Export anything you need from it before the licence lapses, because it is not recoverable once the account closes.
- My licence renews soon. What is the sensible order?
- Get the LearnDash export and the package files out first, while everything is still running. Those two are what the move needs, and they are what you cannot get back afterwards. Once they are safely out, renewing or not becomes a decision instead of a deadline.
- Do I have to keep paying for WordPress hosting as well?
- Not once the courses and the site have moved. That is usually the real saving - a WordPress install running a course plugin, a player plugin and a page builder is several licences and a hosting bill, all renewing whether or not anyone opens them.