You can create a fully functional online exam with a few simple steps, using the WordPress quiz plugin – Quiz Maker. Install the plugin, create your questions with a variety of question types, insert them into your quiz, configure scoring and submissions, and most importantly, automatically send a certificate to users upon completion.
Key takeaways:
- Complete exam creation inside WordPress: Quiz Maker lets you build online exams with customizable questions, scoring rules, time limits, and automated submissions without any coding.
- Automatic certificate delivery: Users can receive a professionally designed PDF certificate immediately after completing the exam, fully based on their score or percentage settings.
- Built-in user data collection: Easily gather participant details such as names and emails, which are required for certificates and useful for lead generation or class management.
- Detailed performance analytics: Access full reports for every exam taker, including scores, time spent, correct and incorrect answers, and downloadable certificates.
Step-by-Step Guide to Building a WordPress Quiz with Quiz Maker
Step 1 – Install and Set Up the Quiz Maker Plugin
Before you can create a WordPress quiz, test, or exam, you’ll need to install the right quiz builder. To do that, head to your WordPress dashboard → Plugins → Add New, and search for “Quiz Maker”.
- Click Install Now, then Activate.
- You’ll now see the Quiz Maker tab in your admin sidebar.
Step 2 – Create Your Quiz With the Quiz Maker Plugin
After installing the Quiz Maker plugin on your WordPress site, for the next step, you need to create exam questions and then create the quiz or online exam. You’ll do everything directly from your WordPress dashboard using the plugin’s built-in tools.
Create Questions
Head to Quiz Maker, then “Questions”. Click “Add New”. Here, you can add questions and build your question bank for the test. The plugin comes in with a selection of different question types, such as multiple-choice questions, checkboxes, drop-downs, or short answer formats. You can assign points, mark correct answers, and even include media files.
Create the quiz and insert the questions
You can either choose a test that you made prior to or create a new one. If it’s a new one:
Go to “Quiz Maker” and then “Quizzes,” then click “Add New” to create your exam. Give it a title, then scroll down to import your prepared questions. You can reorder or randomize questions, set time limits, personalize the results page, define passing scores, and configure the rest of the quiz settings.
To make it more visually engaging, you can customize it to your liking and play around with advanced customization, such as progress bars, adjust quiz format, and other settings to suit your online exams and tests.
For a deeper step-by-step tutorial, you can check out the article that explains in detail how to create an online exam, or you can watch the video on how to create a quiz in WordPress using the Quiz Maker plugin.
Step 3 – Create the Certificate
First, go to the “E-Mail, Certificate” tab in your quiz and tick the “Send certificate to user” box. It sends a certificate PDF file to the user after quiz submission. The two options provided, “Percentage” and “Points,” configure the PDF file’s content with their respective options. After you tick the box, you will notice other fields appear.
- Title: In the “Certificate title” box, add the title and customize its color, size, etc.
- Body: In the “Certificate body” box, add the details that you want to include in the certificate, such as the recipient’s name, the achievement or purpose of the certificate, the date, and any relevant signatures or logos. In the right corner of the box, you’ll notice the “Message variables” option. You can insert those if you want to include the user’s name, the date, quiz score, etc. Custom messages are a fantastic way to learn how to create a simple test with advanced functionality and make it more engaging.
- Certificate orientation: Choose either a landscape or a portrait layout.
- Certificate background image: You can upload your desired background image for the certificate, and that gives you a lot more control and flexibility over the design of the certificate.
- Certificate frame: You can choose from many of the templates available, both for the landscape and the portrait layout in the plug-in itself.
- Email configuration: You can specify the sender’s name, add a subject line, etc.
- Send email to admin: When this box is enabled, the plugin sends an email containing the quiz results to the admin email address set in WordPress General Settings. You can customize this email the same way you customized the one sent to the user.
- Generate Preview: And when you click generate certificate preview at the bottom, you’ll notice the “Open certificate” button appear, and when you click it’ll redirect you to a new tab in your browser with a PDF file that you can download as well, which will show you the final look of the certificate.
Step 4 – User Information
Next, you need to configure user information in order to collect the quiz takers’ or the test takers’ email addresses, names, etc. To access that, head to the “User Data” tab in your quiz.
“Information Form” has two main options to choose from. “Before Quiz” shows the form before the test starts. The “After Quiz” option displays the form once the user finishes.
Under “Available Fields”, you’ll find boxes like name, email, phone, etc., and to add those, simply drag and drop the fields into the “Active Fields” area. You can also make them required to avoid any complications.
Step 5 – Publish the Quiz
Once your exam or WordPress quiz is ready, it’s time to make it accessible to participants. From your WordPress dashboard, you need to go to Quiz Maker and then “Quizzes,” and then locate the quiz that you want to publish and copy the provided short code.
Next, go to Pages or Posts, depending on where you want the quiz to appear. Open your chosen page or click “Add New Post” and then insert the shortcode block. Paste the shortcode you copied, then click publish. Now your quiz is live!
Step 6 – Access the Results
To access or validate the results as the admin after the quiz takes or the test takers have completed their exam, we need to go to the results tab on the left under the “Quiz maker”, and you will immediately notice the results.
Click on “view details” and then click “detailed report”. You can notice details like the duration, the score, the correct and the wrong answers, and you can access the certificate, yet again, you can either open it or download it.
Why Create Quizzes with Certificates
Professionalize Your Content
For quiz creators, the integration of certificates helps to professionalize your content. For example, if you’re an English tutor who sells online courses and uses online exams to test knowledge for a TOEFL exam or a simple English level quiz, offering a certificate upon submission can make you so much more credible and strengthen your brand.
Participants perceive tests or exams with certificates as more valuable and which can help increase your competition in the market as a language professional.
Motivation
Including a certificate in your online tests or WordPress quizzes gives students a sense of achievement and elevates the value of your test beyond a simple visual reward. Certificates serve as a reward for passing an online test’s knowledge check, but they can also inspire users to complete the test or share their success.
Collect Leads
Since certificates are a fantastic and natural way to efficiently collect leads, the best quiz would also include them as rewards. To send customized campaigns, import the gathered data into an email marketing platform, such as Mailchimp, which you can access via the integration tab. To make your online test even more useful, just ask users to submit their email address or other information before creating a certificate.
Conclusion
Creating an online exam with a certificate in WordPress is much easier than you might think. The WordPress Quiz Maker plugin is one of the best online exam makers that comes with a variety of benefits.
You can design quizzes and tests and add a bunch of different question options (from multiple-choice questions to uploading media) to automatically deliver professional certificates to the users. This is one of the many ways to make the quiz engaging.
Certificates add real value. They motivate learners and give participants a tangible takeaway they can be proud of. It boosts engagement and provides detailed results tracking and user data to help you understand performance, allowing for future improvements and better audience insights.
It’s your turn now. Create the certificate, set up your first test, and post it to your WordPress website.
