Override Templates Files

Academy renders its frontend (course archives, single course pages, the instructor profile, shortcode output, and more) from a set of PHP template files bundled with the plugin. If you’re comfortable editing theme files, you can override any of these in your own theme instead of touching the plugin — the same convention WooCommerce and most WordPress plugins use, so your changes survive plugin updates.

This is a developer-facing workflow (editing theme files directly), not a wp-admin screen.

Where the default templates live

All of Academy’s default templates ship inside the plugin at:

wp-content/plugins/academy/templates/

Academy\Frontend\Template\Loader::template_loader() looks for a matching file in your active theme first (via WordPress’s own locate_template()), and only falls back to the plugin’s copy in templates/ if the theme doesn’t provide one:

// includes/frontend/template/loader.php
public function template_loader( $template ) {
    ...
    $default_file = $this->get_template_loader_default_file();
    ...
}

How to override a template

Always override into a child theme if you’re using one — editing the parent theme directly means your changes are lost the next time the parent theme updates.

Example: overriding the single course template

To change the markup around a single course page, copy templates/single-course.php to wp-content/themes/your-theme/academy/single-course.php and edit it there. Academy’s template loader will find your theme’s copy first and use it instead of the plugin’s default.

The same pattern works for any file under templates/ — including the ones nested in subfolders like templates/single-course/ or templates/loop/; just mirror the same subfolder path inside your theme’s academy/ directory.

Classic themes only

Template overrides only apply on classic (non-block, non-full-site-editing) themes. Academy checks this with Helper::is_fse_theme():

public static function is_fse_theme() {
    if ( function_exists( 'wp_is_block_theme' ) ) {
        return (bool) \wp_is_block_theme();
    }
    ...
}

If your theme is a block/FSE theme (or you’ve switched Academy’s classic templates over to block templates), the PHP override system in this guide doesn’t apply — those pages are instead built from Academy’s block templates and styled through the Customize screen (see the Customize Screen guide), and you’d override them with the Site Editor instead of copying PHP files.

Some real template files you can override

Field breakdown