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How-to

Per-course certificate designs

Alva Courses holds one certificate design per course, plus a store default. A course with its own design uses it; every other course falls back to the default, so a flagship programme can carry its own background and wording without you rebuilding the certificate for the rest of your catalogue.

Before you start

The layout designer needs a background image before it will open. Until a design has both a background and at least one placed element, certificates for that course print the built-in layout instead of yours.

Create a design and assign it to a course

  1. Open Shopify admin, then Alva Courses, then Settings → Certificates.
  2. Leave the Course dropdown on Use store default to edit the design every course falls back to.
  3. Upload a Background Image, then click Customize Certificate Layout and place your elements.
  4. Choose a course in the Course dropdown. The store default loads as a starting point; nothing is saved against the course yet.
  5. Change the background, layout, issuer name or email wording for that course, then save.
  6. Click Download Test Certificate to preview the design with sample data.

How a course picks its design

Alva Courses looks for a design saved against the course first and falls back to the store default only when there is none. Once a course has its own design it keeps it: Reset to Default clears the background and layout of whichever design you are editing, returning it to the plain built-in certificate rather than to your store default.

What students see

Nothing changes in the storefront course player: students download their certificate as before, and the PDF is drawn from whichever design applies to the course they finished.

Certificates that are already issued

Certificates are generated when they are downloaded or emailed, not stored as files. A PDF already in a student's inbox keeps the design it was made with, but a student who downloads again gets whatever design applies to their course today. The exception is a student enrolled under a collection policy rule that names a certificate — their enrolment records that design and keeps it.

See also

Next, customise the certificate, print the student's grade on it, or set up the certificate email.

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Last updated 2026-09-07