To add SCORM courses to a WordPress site, you need an LMS that can host and play the package. In Learnomy, that’s the SCORM module in Learnomy Pro: you upload the .zip as a lesson, learners play it inside the normal lesson player, and its completion status and score feed into course progress. Learnomy Free doesn’t include SCORM.
It supports SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004. That’s the whole list: no AICC, and no cmi5 or LTI in this module, so if a client asks for those, say so up front.
What SCORM is, and when you still need it
SCORM is an old packaging standard. An authoring tool exports your course as a zip with a manifest file, and any compliant LMS can play it and read back whether the learner finished.
You still run into it for a boring reason: someone already has the content. A compliance course built years ago in Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, iSpring or Rise is sitting in a folder, and rebuilding it by hand would cost more than the course is worth. SCORM lets you move it as-is.
If you’re writing fresh content, you don’t need SCORM at all. Native lessons are easier to edit and update.
SCORM 1.2 vs 2004 in practice
Learnomy reads the version from the package’s imsmanifest.xml, so you don’t pick it. For you, the practical difference is mostly on the authoring side: check which version your tool exports and whether a newer export is easy to make. Learnomy plays both through the same lesson player and the same tracking report, so there’s nothing to configure per version.
Upload and play
SCORM is opt-in, so nothing loads until you turn it on. The steps, from the SCORM docs:
- Enable SCORM under Learnomy Settings > Modules.
- Create or open a lesson and set its content type to SCORM.
- Save the lesson first. The uploader only appears once the lesson exists.
- Upload the
.zip. Learnomy reads the manifest and shows the detected version, the launch file and the number of SCOs. - Publish. Enrolled learners play it in a sandboxed runtime.
The default size limit is 100 MB, and a developer can change it with the learnomy_scorm_max_package_mb filter. Packages that contain script or executable files, or that look like a zip bomb, are rejected on upload. Package files are served only to people with access to the course, never from a public uploads URL.
Completion, score and resume
The package’s own status (completed or passed) goes through the same progress pipeline as a native lesson, so course completion and certificates behave normally. You can also set the lesson’s completion mode to Auto: SCORM / standards package, which keeps the Free Mark Complete button disabled until the package itself reports a finish. That stops learners clicking through a 40-minute module in four seconds.
Learners resume where they left off: the runtime stores the bookmark and suspend data and restores them on the next visit. If an instructor or admin previews a lesson without being enrolled, their run isn’t written to anyone’s tracking record.
Reporting
Under Learnomy > Pro Tools > SCORM Tracking you get a per-learner table with status, score, resume location and time on task. Filter by lesson or status, and export to CSV. It’s limited to site owners by default, since it holds learner data.
SCORM scores can also count toward the gradebook as a weighted “Standards” source. One catch from the gradebook docs: if a course has no SCORM package, set that weight to 0, or students get marked down for a score that doesn’t exist.
Moving an existing SCORM library
Most people arrive with a folder of packages, not one. A sensible order is to start with the course that gets the most traffic, because any problem shows up where it hurts least to fix. Add each package to its own lesson, and wrap those lessons in a normal course so you can put them behind a price, a membership or an enrolment, the same way as any other course.
That’s the real advantage over hosting packages on a bare file server: a SCORM lesson sits next to your video and text lessons, and counts toward the same course progress and certificates. A learner can do a native intro lesson, a SCORM module and a quiz in one course without noticing the seams.
Keep the originals. Learnomy stores each package against its lesson and lets you replace it later, but your authoring tool’s source files are the only way to make real edits.
What to test before you commit
Don’t judge SCORM support from a feature list. Judge it from your own package. Before you move a whole library over, take one real course and run it through on a staging site:
- Does it upload, and does Learnomy detect the right version?
- Does the first launch play without a blank frame or a script error?
- Close the tab halfway, come back, and check it resumes at the bookmark.
- Finish it as a test student. Does the lesson mark complete, and does the score show in the tracking report?
- If you use the gradebook, does the score land in the Standards column?
Fifteen minutes of that tells you more than any compatibility claim, ours included. Authoring tools export slightly differently, and the one package that misbehaves is usually the one with a quirky export setting, not a platform fault.
Also check who can see what. The tracking report is for site owners by default, so if instructors need it, a developer has to widen access with the learnomy_scorm_report_cap filter.
Who this suits
SCORM earns its place for corporate and compliance training, where an auditor wants proof that a named person finished a named module, and where the content was bought or built elsewhere. If that’s you, the tracking report with its CSV export is the part that matters most.
For a creator selling a paid course to the public, SCORM is usually irrelevant. Your students don’t care what the lesson is packaged as. Spend the effort on the course itself.
When not to use SCORM
SCORM reports a finish and a score, and not much else. It’s a poor fit if you want rich learner activity data, because that’s a different job. Learnomy covers that separately, see xAPI learning records. It’s also overkill for a small course you author yourself.
Before committing, test with your own package: authoring tools differ in how cleanly they export, and a single odd package is the usual cause of trouble. Try one on a staging site and watch a full run through to completion.
For the plan breakdown, see Free vs Pro, and for teams running mandatory training, the corporate training page.